Episode 39: Kim Clune; What If Being Here Is The Lesson?

A last minute email pulls Kim Clune from a normal life and drops her into Haines, Alaska, guiding photography tours through bears, whales, wildflowers, and northern lights. That leap becomes the start of a bigger story about what happens when you stop chasing the “perfect setup” and start practicing real attention. We talk about teaching photography across every skill level, why gear obsession can ruin the shot, and how the best images often come from staying quiet long enough to actually see what’s unfolding.

Then the conversation turns hard and honest. Kim shares her stage three breast cancer diagnosis, the brutal reality of chemotherapy side effects, surgery, radiation, and the complicated emotions that come with chronic illness, grief, and survival. She explains invasive lobular carcinoma and why self checks matter, and she gives the simplest, most useful advice for anyone supporting a loved one with cancer: ask what they need, then listen without trying to fix them.

We also go somewhere unexpected, into out of body experiences, guided meditation, and the way a crisis can reshape beliefs about purpose, trauma, and what it means to be present. Kim talks about her accidental viral YouTube update, the joy and the backlash that came with public storytelling, and why she’s now working toward more compassionate end of life options like death with dignity in Alaska. If you care about photography, resilience, cancer support, or end of life planning, this one stays with you.

Subscribe for more conversations, share this with someone who needs it, and leave a review with the biggest takeaway you’re sitting with today.

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To Learn More About Hospice in Haines Alaska, enjoy this interview with Hospice Director Shannon McPhetres - https://youtu.be/c1mEX0sKUg0

Visit Kim's Photo Page - https://www.kimclune.com/
Visit Kim's YouTube Page - https://www.youtube.com/@kimclune 
Visit Kim's Facebook Page - https://www.facebook.com/kimclune

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Transcript

Welcome And Meet Kim Clune

Douglas 0:00

Welcome to this episode of Doug Has Questions. Today my guest is Kim Clun, uh amazing photographer. If you want to look at any of her stuff, and she has stuff available to purchase on her website, KimC L-U-N-E.com. You got it. Go to the website, check it out. Absolutely beautiful work, Kim.

Kim 0:21

Thank you.

Douglas 0:22

And thank you for joining us.

Kim 0:23

Thanks for having me.

Douglas 0:24

And before we get too far, I gotta remember we got we got our mugs that we're giving to everybody. Oh, that's so fun.

Kim 0:31

I love it. And I have answers.

Douglas 0:32

And you have the answers. Yep. That's great.

Kim 0:36

Thank you.

Douglas 0:37

No, thank you for joining us. I'm looking forward to this.

Kim 0:40

Yeah, me too. Me too.

The Road That Leads To Haines

Douglas 0:42

So where where did we've you've listened to a couple of these, I think. So you know how this goes. Where where did Kim's story begin? Oh gosh. I didn't come that prepared. Okay.

Kim 0:55

Um well let's start with Haynes, because that's our connection. Okay, yeah. Connection's in Haynes. Yeah.

Douglas 1:02

So what brought you to Haynes?

Kim 1:03

Um, it's a little bit of a roundabout story. I can make it as quick as I possibly can. You don't have to make it quick. We've got plenty of time. I know, but so I know about Haynes because of Joe Ordonia's. Okay. And he runs Rainbow Glacier Adventures.

Douglas 1:20

Yep.

Kim 1:21

And I was living in New York. A friend of mine got a job here. She was driving an RV down with her brother back to the lower 48. They stopped at the Rusty Compass. And of course, Cindy tells her story to everybody. Joe always asks for a story. So the two were a perfect match. And when she told him that she's also an award-winning photographer, um, but journalistically, and so she was working for the Times Union in Albany, and basically they cut her and all the high, like all the long-term people who were more expensive, they made it really sweet for them to take early retirement so that they could bring in a bunch of new people. So she came up here without a job, and Joe was like, Well, I need photo guides. Would you like to come work for me? Which was not on her radar. But she came back to New York and said, Can you take care of my real estate photography? Can't so that when I come back, I still have a job because I'll only be gone for six months. And I was like, Yeah, sure, no problem. And I said, It'd be even better if you got me a job, and I was kidding.

Douglas 2:30

Yeah. When was this?

Kim 2:32

2018.

Douglas 2:33

2018, okay.

Kim 2:34

And so there was a night where I was leaving with five four photographers, or I was leaving with three photographers, four of us were meeting up in Iceland to do an envelopment shoot. And my husband was in Washington, DC, and he was coming home. I want to say all I remember is we had like two hours to talk to each other before we pass like ships and nice. And I just get this email saying somebody's not showing up for the season. Can you come? We're short of person. I was not expecting that, and not so fast. It was like, you have to leave next month. We had just signed a contract on our house to have it an extension put on. I hadn't chosen anything to put in the place. And um, yeah, it was like it was madhouse. So I told my husband, I'm like, all right, I got this email. I know I can't do this, right? Like, I can't. And he's like, No, you have to do it, and I'll come visit, you never know where it's gonna lead. Yeah, and so I went on this trip and Joe and I spoke, and of course, different time zones, and it was his Sunday dinner. I think I was still in Saturday night, something like that. And I said, You have to convince me that this is cool because first of all, I'm actually like really in love with the person I'm married to, which not everybody can say, but it's really with him for six months, and um he said, you know, when you get here, there'll still be snow in the mountains, the bears will just be coming down. Not long after you get here, the wildflowers turn on, like a light switch, and then you have the salmon come in and the bears are on the river, and then you know, before you leave, you'll have the northern lights. And I was like, You had me at the very first thing you did. So I came and I had knew nothing of guiding. I was a wedding photographer who loved doing wildlife, but you know, that was not my bread and butter at the time. And yeah, I came here and got a crash course and what it means to guide, and you know, learned all the nature and the natural history and the clinket history, and yeah. So that's my introduction to Haynes.

Douglas 4:42

That's just so wild that you're getting ready to go to Iceland. Yeah, and you're like, oh, by the way, we need you in Haynes.

Kim 4:48

Yeah.

Douglas 4:49

So how when you got done with the Iceland trip, how long did you have at home before you were heading to Haynes?

Kim 4:54

I want to say it was like two or three weeks. So that's pretty good. I had to get like my driver's um, you know, record. I had to get I don't even remember. It was like, I remember I had to pack, all I could pack was a 50-pound box and ship it here. I didn't know where I was gonna live. Um Dina Selby actually was working for Joe at the time, and Joe was like, Oh, you can move in with Dina, which I don't think he'd have even asked anybody yet. So I emailed Dina and she's like, Great. And she said, by the way, there are whales on the Lynn Canal today, and I was like, Okay.

Douglas 5:29

All right, this is awesome. Make sure some of them hang around when I'm gonna be there. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kim 5:34

Uh-huh. So yeah, it was it was the best choice I ever made. It was fascinating.

Douglas 5:38

So what was that? What was that first summer like? Was that just like drinking water out of a fire hose with everything coming at you? Yes.

Kim 5:45

I knew nothing really about Alaska other than a few cruise ships. You know, the Tim and I had taken two trips, I think, here and on cruises and never been to Haynes. So I knew nothing about that. Um yeah.

Douglas 5:59

But you keep coming back, so it must have been a lot of fun.

Kim 6:03

It was a lot of fun, and and I think because it wasn't just guiding and it wasn't just the nature. I mean, Tim and I take a annual trip every year. We do really cool things. We go to the Galapagos, or we go see the polar bears in Churchill, Manitoba, or you know, there's always something on the horizon. But this was personal because Dina was you know plugged into the town and she met, she introduced me to different people and had me going to play Mexican train and going to Fortnite talks at the museum, and I got to meet everybody that I still now know, and I felt like I made friends and didn't just have a job.

Douglas 6:42

Okay. I think that's a difference. That's a big difference. Yeah.

Kim 6:46

I didn't know just the people in the company, you know. It was it was the town, so I loved this town. I fell in love with that. And yeah, I could come for bears, and that was cool, but but it was the people.

Douglas 6:58

Yeah.

Kim 6:59

It was definitely the people.

Guiding Photo Tours For Every Skill

Douglas 7:01

And what's how what size groups is that that you're taking out on these photos? Was it just photography tours or were you just doing nature tours as well?

Kim 7:08

I was doing photography tours. Well, it it's a small company plug-in where you can. Sometimes I drive people out to the raft trips, you know, on days that I didn't have photo tours. Other times I was doing all day private photo tours, so it just depended on what the need was. But the average um I think the bus is holded hold it. I think the buses held 14. Um 14 passengers, I think.

Douglas 7:34

It was a pretty wide breadth of skill set of photographers that are coming up.

Kim 7:39

Yeah, yeah. You had people who wanted didn't know how to use their cell phones and just wanted to learn that. And then you had people who had, you know, a thousand dollars dollars and up lenses and didn't know how to use their cameras. Or you had the people who knew everything and didn't need you but just wanted to be on a tour where you were gonna point them in the right direction.

Douglas 7:58

In the right direction of where to go. Yeah. Yeah. So what what kind of a challenge was that? Because if you've got people coming with different camera systems.

Kim 8:05

Yeah, yeah.

Douglas 8:07

Um was that was that a challenge is trying to figure out between uh canon, Sony? I mean, depending on which I have no idea which brand you use, but I'm Canon. You're Canon, okay, I'm a Canon guy.

Kim 8:18

Just out of necessity because that's what my husband had, and we had pieces and parts, and we just built on the system. But um, I had studied with a few photographers that were using different systems, so I had a little bit of a handle on that. But then, you know, you have to know all the cell phones and how to do long exposures and get the cool waterfall, you know, looking dreamy, and yeah, it was it was a learning curve. Sometimes I'd sit with the menus for a little while and kind of tuck savvy, so it wasn't too bad. Yeah.

How Photography First Took Hold

Douglas 8:50

So what what brought on the photography for you? What got you what got you into photography in the first place? Okay. Let's take that step back. We now we know why you're in Haynes.

Kim 9:01

Right.

Douglas 9:02

And like I said before, you do a fab fantastic job with your photography. Thank you. Where where did that begin? Where did that creative juice hit you?

Kim 9:12

You know, it's always my my grandmother always had the little point and shoot camera with the flash cubes when I was growing up. She'd always cut off our heads, but um it was just always part of my family. We took pictures of everything, and then my dad did that, and then so I started carrying a point and shoot, and I was a flight attendant for a while overseas, and so I um I always had a point and shoot with me, but I was never technical. And then in 2013, my cousin, my my niece, sorry, um, had asked me to shoot her Burning Man wedding because I would make these scrapbooks for the family, and uh she just loved the scrapbook. She got married at Burning Man? She did. Oh wow.

Douglas 9:53

She got engaged at Burning Man and then there's gotta be an amazing story behind that, but let's continue though on the photography one.

Kim 10:02

So I didn't know how to shoot. I just, you know, and she's like, you don't have to, like just do and I was like, no. And my husband had bought me for our wedding a DSLR, and you know, I just I had it on auto. But I was getting better with composition and and kind of practicing those things, and she um she didn't really care, but I cared, so I booked myself in a crash course, DSLR, you know, intro kind of thing, and spent the day learning how to, you know, they'd throw a scarf in the air and you have to catch it before it evolves, you know, without it blurring, and you know, we'd go in the dark and there'd be sparklers, and you had to like you know have the settings right for that, which was great because everything's on fire at Burning Man in the dark. So perfect thing to learn. Um, I went there and I knew that we were like, I have this brand new camera, right? And I'm like, how do I keep it from fritzing? Because the playa dust is really acidic. Yeah. And so if it gets in the camera, they say like within six months your electronics can fry.

Douglas 11:07

Really?

Kim 11:07

Yeah.

Douglas 11:08

That quickly.

Kim 11:09

So yeah, you you wouldn't even know that that's what happened, you know, when it if it happens that far down the line. So I learned real quickly that I needed to pick one lens and I have to run with that the whole time and tape it on so I could seal it.

Douglas 11:24

Okay.

Kim 11:24

There was no six-inch lenses, so I picked a 50 millimeter because I could get fairly close, but I could run away and get landscape scenes, and I did a lot of ride. And uh while we're driving in an art, well, riding in an art car, and the only thing we had to drink was a cooler full of champagne. So it was a very interesting day. And I was terrified. She's my favorite, one of two favorite nieces. I have many. But um, and I can say, I can say this. Yeah. Yeah. My family won't get mad. But um, these are the two that I'm closest to, she and her sister. And I really didn't want to fail her, you know. That that was a lot of pressure.

Douglas 12:07

I think there's more pressure than that than if you're hired by somebody, because it's fan. If if somebody hires you to do it and it doesn't work out and they're mad about paying money for it, that's one thing. But if it's family, right? You gotta see them all the time. All right. I can see where there'd be a tremendous amount of pressure because this it again, it's your first time doing that. Yeah.

Kim 12:29

Yeah. I never shot a wedding.

Douglas 12:31

Well, I'm guessing it turned out.

Kim 12:32

I didn't gotta pose people. She's like, I don't want posed.

Douglas 12:36

It turned out great.

Kim 12:37

It would it's still the fave my favorite wedding. Yeah. I got the can I got the camera connected to the laptop and unloaded everything, and I was like, oh my god, I did it. Tears streaming down my face. Like I had so much pressure for so long. Uh-huh. And yeah, it worked. And then she wanted to post, not post, but project all these images on a warehouse wall in Seattle when she got back, when she had her like in town reception. Okay. So I had to learn how to edit everything. And she really wanted kind of this stylistic, like surrealist almost look to it. Almost looks illustrative and like heavy contrast, real saturation. And so I learned how to do all of that with thousands of photographs that I took.

Douglas 13:28

Well, were you were you using Lightroom? Okay.

Kim 13:30

So I learned that like all by myself.

Douglas 13:33

And I still show those pictures, and people are like, what's what's the time frame between when the wedding and this reception in Seattle that you're learning Lightroom and processing like 1,500 photographs to how much how much time did you have on that?

Kim 13:49

I think I had like less than a month.

The Burning Man Wedding Crash Course

Douglas 13:52

Jeez.

Kim 13:53

Yeah. But I've been watching like this. So there's a photographer that I was following, and his name is Trey Radcliffe. And he at the time, he was one of the most popular photographers on Google. Um, back when Google had the social media component, right? And so he was joining with other photographers who they would have all these conversations and they'd put these tutorials on YouTube. So I was I was really able to hone in and figure out, like, all right, this is what I'm looking to do. Here's a YouTube video on it. Okay. And I kind of taught myself through that without going to school, but I it's not like I was really on my own. I had the internet, right?

Douglas 14:34

Yeah, but but still just I'm I'm thinking my history of trying to process photographs in Lightroom.

Kim 14:42

Yeah.

Douglas 14:42

I I I took a class with Ron Horn here in town. He was the one that got me into photography back in the day. It was probably around that was a little earlier than that. It was probably mid 2000, 2006, 2007. Got an inexpensive DSLR and kind of been adding on to that since. The biggest problem I have with I've I've I'm color deficient in my eyes, right? And so he's in the class, he's talking about with saturation or adjusting the color, and he'd be like, Yeah, you just move it a little bit here, and everybody's like, Oh wow. I'm like, I didn't see anything. He said, No, no, no, just watch from here to here. Like, nope. It looks the same to me. He goes, Well, what about this? Like, still looks the same to me. And so the processing for me has always been that's what got me to I it kind of pushed me to stop taking pictures. Okay. Because I'd go out and and take a whole bunch of pictures and I'd get them back, and I was so frustrated with the processing part of it that I wasn't picking, and when I'd show some to friends, they're like, Yeah, that it's just it was never they're like, it looks good, but this is a little off, or this is a little it's like, man, I spent like 45 minutes trying to get this just right. But what my eyes see and what everybody else sees are so different on the color aspect of it. Yeah. That I I was just kind of like, alright, I I don't know photographer. I still have my camera stuff, but most of it's been using doing the that's what before we got these smaller cameras, that's what I used to shoot all the podcasts.

Kim 16:17

Okay.

Douglas 16:17

Because I was I just gave up on the on the processing part of it.

Kim 16:22

I wonder if it would be if you could still find fun in doing black and white and just kind of get into that more edgy.

Douglas 16:30

That might be the that might be the way to go.

Kim 16:32

Because then you can still play with the textures and the and if your color's off, nobody cares. Yeah. Yeah.

Douglas 16:37

But that that was so that's why it's amazing to me, with my struggles of it, that in a month you're processing 1500 wedding pictures after your first shoot and displaying them on the side of this warehouse. For me, my mind's just superwoman over here doing this.

Kim 16:56

I I can get a little obsessive.

Douglas 17:02

Well, if it if if those pictures are anywhere near the quality of the wildlife ones that you have and the ones you have on your website, I'm sure I can understand why your niece would be very happy with the job that her aunt did with her wedding.

Kim 17:14

It it was really good for her, and it ended up being really good for me too, because the woman I took the class with, I was I was fascinated now. Now I'm hooked, right? And so I went back to her.

Douglas 17:25

So is this was this in Albany? Yeah. And so is that was it a one-on-one class or was it a group class that she had? And how how long was the class?

Kim 17:33

So the intro one was just a day.

Douglas 17:36

Okay, you took a one-day class? Get out of here.

Kim 17:41

Yeah.

Douglas 17:42

Like an eight-hour class, six-hour class?

Kim 17:45

Probably four.

Douglas 17:46

Four hours.

Kim 17:47

Yeah.

Douglas 17:47

And you had to just like totally rock this with shooting.

Kim 17:50

Trust me, I did not think I would.

Douglas 17:53

You did. Give yourself credit. You took a four-hour class and you go out and just kill it in the middle of the desert.

Kim 18:01

I it first of all, a couple of things. So the images there just jump into your lens. Like, there's some amazing stuff. And the technical side, I will say, like, yeah, there it some of them aren't great, some of them have a really cool feel to them. But like people twirling fire at night, you know, the people are blurry. The fire is cool motion. I I mean, if you looked at it from a technical standpoint, a lot of them wouldn't fly for some of the night photos. And daytime, we got really lucky because we had full-on sun and dust storms and all kinds of interesting things. But the lighting was good. So I didn't have to play with the low light scenarios.

Douglas 18:43

Okay.

Kim 18:43

Which was really helpful. Like if it were raining, mudstorms, or yeah, it it just it would have been a whole different scenario. So I had a lot of things working in my favor.

Douglas 18:53

I I understand all of that, Kim. But at the same time, please give yourself credit that after a four-minute class, I was good. Good. It happened. Like that is a that is amazing. And I'm still really proud of those images. I am. I am.

Kim 19:10

Yeah.

Douglas 19:11

And so when you when you get back to Albany after this, so you So I take that next class.

Kim 19:15

You're like, I want the next class. Yeah. And this one was a six-week course. This one is okay. I'm I'm I'm into this.

Douglas 19:21

I found I found my passion.

Kim 19:23

Yeah. And I loved the way this woman taught. So, and she was younger than me and you know, just had all kinds of energy. So I bring the first day of class, I was like, hey, I just wanted to bring this in and show you because I want to thank you for what you helped me achieve. And she was going through the book, and you know, other people kind of gathered around because I showed up early. I didn't want to wasn't trying to make it like a class thing, but people were filtering in, and so they came and they were looking and they were asking questions, and she's not saying much. And I was like, maybe she doesn't like like this really heavy-handed editing. You know, maybe that's not her thing. And she's just kind of looking and she's like, great job. And she hands it back. And then we do class, and the next week I get a phone call from her because she's got it off the class roster, and she said, My second shooter isn't showing up for a wedding. Will you come shoot with me this weekend? I guess she liked the book. I mean, I tried to do all the traditional stuff with the two rings sitting on the little, you know, you know what I mean? Like in the shoe shot, and but yeah, that's how my I got into doing weddings. So just wasn't looking for that one either.

Douglas 20:36

And so did you start shooting with her on weddings?

Kim 20:38

I got hired by her and I worked with her for two years, I think.

Douglas 20:44

Yeah. And then did you go out on your own then?

Kim 20:46

I did, but I was not so great with the business end. I didn't like contracts, I didn't like interviewing couples and wondering if this was gonna be a wedding I wanted to shoot. Yeah. Um, she handled all of those things, and I loved that part of what she did. But I loved the shooting. I didn't want to go home at the end of the night. So I felt like I was kind of in the party, and that was always a big high. So yeah, that was a that was a an eye-opening experience that I didn't really want to work on my own.

Learning Weddings Without Loving Business

Kim 21:17

Okay, but then Haynes happened, Haynes happened, and it didn't really matter.

Douglas 21:21

Yeah. So you also talked about doing real estate shoots.

Kim 21:25

That was just fitting in and filling in between for for Cindy, but then it didn't happen because I came here.

Douglas 21:32

Okay, that was one of the things she did. Yeah. That wasn't necessarily so you go from you're doing the weddings.

Wildlife Gear And Staying With The Moment

Douglas 21:38

How do you get into this into the wildlife stuff that you're shooting?

Kim 21:41

I just always did it anyway when we were on vacations.

Douglas 21:44

Those are just vacation things?

Kim 21:45

They were for a while. Um, and then you know, Christmas would come and my husband bought me a long lens, and then we'd go to the Galapagos and see all these amazing things, and I have the you know, the bigger lenses. So part of it. being right place I mean I'm not regarding the skills but being right place right time having the right gear and and so over time we just kept building the collection and yeah now I mean now I only work really with three lenses and what what are the three? Uh I've got a 150600 and I have a um I've got a wide angle 16 well I guess what is it it's so funny I've stopped thinking specs now because I just have my gear and now I just focus on the subject.

Douglas 22:33

Yeah you just switch and you just know which one it's motor memory grab it and go.

Kim 22:37

Yeah I mean I had a 1635 and then I went to like the 24 now I can't remember what it is. 2470 2470 yeah and I just got my 100 millimeter back for macro so hundreds are nice. Yeah yeah so so yeah those are my three mains and um mostly you know I'll be out here now shooting and you know people see the gear and they always want to talk gear and I'm always like shut up I'm paying attention to my subject thank you I don't I don't want to talk about the means to get the photograph I just want to be in you know locked in and yeah witnessing this amazing thing in front of me so but I also did teach for a little while so I was very gear minded for a while.

Douglas 23:24

Is that do you think too many people get stuck on the gear? Yeah that it's got to be this lens or it's gotta be this and instead of just being out there and focusing on what what's in front of you.

Kim 23:37

Yeah yeah Tim and I were on the Chill Cat last year I think maybe it was the year before just pulled over on the beach and there were two herons one on each side of a a log and they're like they come down to the sand and they're hopping around and I'm like it's just the two of us on the beach there's this cool thing happening all of a sudden this crow comes in picks up a stick another crow comes in grabs the other end of the stick now the herons want the stick and I'm like this is the cool I've never seen these birds I crows yes they'll play like that but I've never seen herons get in on the game and so I'm shooting and this guy pulls up and he's like oh what are you shooting with and I'm like do you not see what's happening in the game watching what's in front of me but he he would not let it go he would not let it go and I was just all about the equipment instead of just yeah just watching what's happening. Yep.

Douglas 24:29

Do you get some good pictures of that?

Kim 24:31

They were far okay they were far even with the long lens sometimes you're just doing it because you want to see it closer. You want to see it closer but you know it's not going to be the best it yeah but I like them for me. Yeah do you do that too? Do you find that you do things for you as much as other people pretty much all my photography is just for me.

Douglas 24:51

Oh okay because I think it all sucks. Stop it we'll talk after no seriously and it was it was one of those the the only time I've done anything in 2018 I went to London to watch the Seahawks play the Raiders and I took a class in London and it just it was just a tourist class and just walked around taking pictures of monuments and and a friend of mine said hey you should put those in the bank and I was like no I'm not gonna do that. And like no no no you should put those in the bank it's like all right so I I had someone put up put them up in the bank and one of my other friends like you know those aren't that good don't you and I was like yeah I do know they're not that good and that's why I usually don't let anybody look at them but that was their I was like oh God you put those up there you know they're not that good right I was like yeah that's kind of what I told you before I put them up there you were saying you should really put those in the bank like thanks for the positive reinforcement there.

Kim 25:49

I feel so bad for you.

Douglas 25:50

That's such a horrible thing for a friend to do the part of that though is that's on stuff like that, that's what I'm always telling myself that it's if I go out there and I'm just shooting by myself I I won't take my cameras out. The best time that I've had shooting it's when I'm with an artistic friend that they've got their camera and we're both out at the same place and you'll see I'll look what do they see over there? Yeah and you kind of do that or they see what do you what are you taking a picture of it's like oh I'm looking at this oh let's try this angle this angle that's fun just being on one-on-one with somebody else whose skill set I really appreciate and having that conversation and it's and it's both on the artistic side and the technical side because I'm wanting to learn how I can whatever I have to do with the camera do I need to ISO whatever change on there to get a better picture and then you know we're chimping looking at the back of the camera would you get what'd you get and that's where I have the most fun with it yeah is with I'm with somebody else that's much more skilled than I am and that I respect artistically sure and to share that experience with them I don't care what the pictures look like because I'm not going to post them anywhere anymore. But having that moment of sharing that with somebody that's where I get the and I don't have any of those friends in Haynes anymore that are into the photography that I used to do that with in the past. Well we'll go out okay it's a deal okay I'd love to go shoot with you sometime that would be that that would be a blast yeah um but yeah that's so that's in I think in 2020 is either 2020 or 2021 I got a new camera body and I put like I think I only had like 200 pictures I've taken with it. Oh wow and then I started using it for video for this. Okay. Because I I and there's I think I took more than 200 yesterday. Well the sounds yeah what what Ron Horn would always give me a bad time about because he'd come to show me different pictures he'd taken it's like oh yeah he goes you know Doug the only way you get better as a photographer is you have to actually take pictures right and he said I heard you went to Whitehorse. Yep did you have your camera with you? It's like no because you realize you can't take pictures if you don't have your camera with you I was like yeah no that's that's good information there you are 100% correct so it's yeah it's something that I enjoy but I I there's been enough struggles with it that I I need to do better. I need to get out and play with it more okay and I'm I'm hoping this winter if I get a chance I was trying to get a class in Seattle um but I was never down there long enough but just sit this is my new camera sit with somebody and take a four hour class or something yeah and just get really good with the technical side of it.

Kim 28:58

And then it is as simple as sitting in your living room and throwing a scarf and trying to shoot it. I mean it's it's getting to the point where the settings have muscle memory.

Douglas 29:07

Exactly yeah yeah and the the thing for me is with this one for some reason the um the different autofocus it's not as clear as I think it should be and so I go online I watch the YouTube videos this is how you set it up and I take a picture and I put it on I was like okay it's it's not doing what I think it should. Okay. And after I do that for a little bit then I get frustrated and I just put it in the closet and I bring it out when I need to do it. Use it for a video camera for a podcast idea that I had it's sharp during video. Huh? It's sharp sharp during video we haven't had we haven't had any issues with it there. So I it always comes back Kim we'll talk I like when it comes back to operator error it's usually what it comes down to is the operator needs more instructions to understand what he's doing.

Kim 29:55

Well and you can fear not because I still have plenty of operator error myself even after all this time.

Douglas 30:01

It happens yeah no matter how much practice we have you're always gonna have operator error.

Doug’s Photography Frustrations And Reset

Kim 30:06

Yes so going through the weddings doing the wildlife coming up to Haynes and now you've got this amazing palette here to take pictures of yes now Tim's up here now too how long was it what was it like that first summer you're like you need to get up here he well he was in charge of the home extension he was doing the home room yeah the dogs so we've got two huge Newfoundlands and um so he was taking care of all that so he came up here once it was so soft in with fog. Oh no he came on a tour with me so that was fun but yeah it rained um he was like I don't know what you see about this place. He loved it but he didn't get to see it in the glory I knew it had right so um so he came back and we we then did get to see it which was great but he really didn't get to come up as much as we hoped. I would send him pictures he'd see those so that's really kind of how he experienced Haynes was through me and I'd put little videos together for him but that was it. So um yeah it it was more after my diagnosis where we kind of came back because I really wanted to be back here. And I was in the middle of cancer treatment and I had a break between I think it was between I had chemo and then surgery and then chemo. So like I was between chemo and surgery and I was having a real hard time with it. So he brought me here because he knew this is my happy place.

Douglas 31:49

So let's let's this is this is gonna be the hard part of this.

Kim 31:52

Yeah.

Douglas 31:53

So so let's get into that

The Diagnosis And A Life Rewritten

Douglas 31:55

here. When when were you diagnosed with cancer?

Kim 31:59

So 2019 so the year after I was here. Oh just one year later and I also got this amazing other job opportunity in between so let me back up just a hair because before I got this job that's when Tim and I went to Churchill Manitoba and saw the polar bears and we befriended a guide on our tour. It was a seven day tour we were on one of those like polar rovers that goes out across the tundra and um you go in November because that's when the seals give birth on the ice and the polar bears all come to feed. So so anyway it was amazing. Isn't that isn't that an amazing opportunity but also kind of a crazy thing to go see because you know you're going there for watching them to because they're coming out to kill these newborn seals we didn't see a lot of that so that happens further out on the ice and you're not out there but you get to see them it's not as horrid as it sounds um but that's why they're there.

Douglas 32:57

Yeah you're there for this you take these pictures these beautiful creatures and the timing is you know why they're there is for this other horrific reason. Right.

Kim 33:05

But it's it's part of the life cycle exactly exactly so got to befriend our guide we had a really lively crew and my husband is a really funny guy and really playful when he's in that scenario so he like they were setting mouse traps for the driver uh for his fingers I mean that that was the crew mostly but we kind of got in on that with our guests you know fellow guests and it was just fun we laughed so hard for so long and so I think through that our guide thought I was funny but um we we connected on Facebook and all of a sudden he knew I was a wedding photographer. He asked everybody on that trip like what what are you gonna do with your photography and he never really asked me um and I never talked to him a whole lot because I didn't want to take him away from people that he was teaching so at the end he came up and he asked me so what are you gonna do with your photography and I said well I am a wedding photographer and he hadn't known that and so that's what he knows about me and then we parts part ways and we're on Facebook and he's seeing my wedding blogs or whatever. And then all of a sudden he's seeing nothing but eagles and brown bears. He writes me like where the hell are you and what are you doing and do you like it? So we got on the phone and I said yeah I love it and I said I'm doing three hour tours sometimes three hours a day and he said do you want to come to Yellowstone with me and do Winter Wolves and I was like this is my husband's dream trip. And I'm getting offered the job and he's not allowed to come and it was a very different job. It was seven days with the same group okay two guides um was it 12 people so six people in each vehicle you have the left and the right view out the vehicle it was very you know different high-end you know trips. Seven days with wolves in Yellowstone well it wasn't specific so seven days I would peep pick people up in Montana drive them through Lamar Valley and then go to West Yellowstone and down to Jackson drop them off okay pick up a new crew and just reverse back and then yeah okay do that over and over. So um I did three three tours of that which is all they kind of let you do because they're like you're gonna burn out it's seven days a week it's you're up at five in the morning making sure that you're having breakfast with these people and then you're all day touring you have dinner with them and then you put on presentations at night and you do it all the next day. And you're loading their 50 pound bags in and out of the rigs. Yeah so it's a lot how many people on each tour so 12 people with two guides two vehicles yeah that's a lot for yeah I can see why somebody would be burned out after three weeks of that for sure for sure but so they usually hire um biologists they are not really interested in if you can take a picture or not even though they sell photography tours they're like that's secondary the people who come here want you to know all there is to know about these animals. About the animals so I crammed and I crammed and I crammed and the guy so the way

Yellowstone Guiding And A Global Offer

Kim 36:15

it ran was I had to get hired by two companies. One was the guide that I had met he had he works for Natural Habitat Adventures the travel arm of the World Wildlife Fund. But he also has his own company and they subcontract him to run the Yellowstone tourist because that's where he lives. He lives in New York Jackson and so he does that run. In winter he does the polar bears and other things he's he's amazing. So anyway I had to get hired by both companies and he was like you're a shoe in for me you've got to impress them so I got in I worked my three trips and I got all the you know customer reviews and everything and and I had worked with his name was Kurt Kurt Johnson. I'd worked with him for a full week and then some other people the other two weeks and he loved my work ethic he couldn't believe like I asked for a reading list and I went through I read everything I was supposed to read and I could relay the stories and he said I kept people entertained. He did say I thought you were funnier no sometimes they bring the funny um but it was it was really good and and so Natural Habitat Adventures then said do you want to come work with us globally and so they had me lined up for Bryce and Zion and the Grand Canyon and then they had they had me lined up for um for Glacier National Park and then they joined forces with Lynblad and uh Natcheo and so I was going to be the first guide that would be the liaison between like jumping from their company to go guide on in the Arctic or Antarctic I can't remember one of the poles with the penguins and like guiding on the tour ship the cruise ship going out on these little excursions.

Douglas 38:05

So let me pause you right there. Yeah if I got if if I was listening correctly and I think I was you started photography in 2013. Yeah this is 2018 yeah and now you're guiding this I'm being offered this opportunity five years yeah does that if I'm the only one that's kind of blown away by that quickly.

Kim 38:30

Yeah yeah it was amazing it was amazing and I was so excited I was so excited I mean it was the the hard part would be being away from my husband yeah but it was three week stents yeah and then I come home and then I'm not working at all so we can do whatever we want but um yeah it was he had to be incredibly proud of you as well yeah yeah yeah he yeah he's always been in my corner through all of this so yeah he um he and I were trying to work out the details and I I was getting ready for my first trip like and I I knew I needed to go through you know not just the learning because that was going to be even faster than the first time but they as they did as they said they were trying to lump me in with like all the canyons were kind of the same material right and then glacier wasn't too far off from what some of like Zion in terms of national national sorry natural um science yeah yeah and so anyway I'm learning all of this and or about to learn it all and I'm like I gotta go for all my health checks gotta make sure because I don't know when I'm gonna be home to do this again and on a regular basis and getting like how do you make an appointment six months out when you don't know what your schedule is so I got everything done and in there was my mammogram and they said we think we're gonna send you to go see somebody today and I was like oh that's not good. That's not good. So I went to see another doctor who was like yeah I'm gonna send you to a surgeon today and I want you just to have a consult with her and get set for a biopsy. So we did that a week later um you know the call came in and I was already stage three and I had gone for all my mammograms. So ladies get your mammograms but also do your self checks because um they didn't catch it. There's a type of breast cancer and there are many kinds but um invasive carcin invasive globular carcinoma and it grows one cell at a time not in a tumor and it grows around structures already in your breast so milk ducts and it it doesn't get detected until it's already in your lymph nodes under your armpit nine times out of ten. And I think it's 10% of cases are what I have. So it's the rarer kind but it's the deadlier kind. So I um got my biopsy and sure enough it was confirmed obviously and then um yeah I got whisked into treatment and I don't do well on any kind of chemicals in my body. I can't even tolerate shampoo well so if I if there's formaldehyde in it my face blows up and my eyes swell shut so I have to be really careful about you know the chemicals I expose myself to and now I'm pumping these poisons into my body and the first week I was in the ER I think three times I lost it 19 pounds in 10 days yeah yeah I was not dealing well with the treatment at all so they stopped that my oncologist said I took an oath to do no harm and I'm killing you so she stopped that until I could have surgery and then she came up with a synthetic version she thought I might respond better to to follow up with the surgery. The crazy thing is I only did half of the treatments and I don't remember anymore. I mean there were so many doctor's appointments I don't remember exactly what the regimen was if it was like I want to say it was 12 and I did six or something. But when they did the surgery this the cancer bed was 10 centimeters and by five and it had that bed had been reduced by half just from doing half the medication. Oh wow so we learned that as hard as it was on my body it was equally as hard on my cancer yeah so you know they kind of joked and like what if you you know what how amazing would it have been if you could have finished and I'm like yeah that's real funny you know like I wish I could have yeah but um I did go through a second round and could only complete half of that but then they found out that I was actually NED status. You're what it means no evidence of disease. They can't say you're cured because there's no cure but they can say there's no evidence of disease anymore.

Treatment Reality And No Evidence Of Disease

Kim 43:25

And I got to that point.

Douglas 43:27

And that was so your diagnosis was what it was 19 2019.

Kim 43:32

May 2019 I think or April something.

Douglas 43:35

And so you go through these treatments you go through the surgery you go through more treatments. And then radiation. And then radiation and then how long was it till they said 18 months.

Kim 43:46

18 months yeah we had to take breaks in between some of these treatments for two weeks instead of one week where sometimes they were supposed to be every two weeks and I had to go longer because I couldn't tolerate it. I left my body a couple times.

Douglas 43:58

So so part of that is also when Getting into COVID.

Kim 44:01

Yeah, well, I finished right as COVID hit.

Douglas 44:04

Right as COVID hit.

Kim 44:05

Yeah. Yeah. I, in fact, Tim was like, You've never seen the Grand Canyon, let's go to Vegas in the Grand Canyon. I had a friend in Vegas, he was in the show. Oh, he was in Cirque du Soleil, and he's like, I'll get you tickets. We go, we do all the things. We took a helicopter into the to the floor of the Grand Canyon, went on a boat ride down there. Um, all the things. And then while we're there, they shut down the strip. Okay.

Douglas 44:31

And we didn't know if we could get it. Yeah.

Kim 44:35

Yeah. Yeah.

Douglas 44:37

So I also caught you. So that was on my mind. But then as you were finished up before I asked that question, you said you left your body a few times.

Out Of Body Moments In Pain

Kim 44:49

Yeah.

Douglas 44:50

Describe that to me.

Kim 44:51

Yes.

Douglas 44:52

What was that like?

Kim 44:53

The first time was really weird. So it was after I'd lost all that weight. I had no strength left. And I after 9-11, we can go down this road another time, but um after 9-11, I was as a flight attendant, I watched it in person. And so I was in therapy at that time. And so I reconnected with my therapist when I was rediagnosed.

Douglas 45:14

You were still you were a flight attendant when 9-11 happened?

Kim 45:18

Yeah, and I was yeah. I don't know which story to go down right now, but yeah.

Douglas 45:23

Um let's continue down the cancer one here.

Kim 45:26

We're gonna go back to that because cancer. Um, okay, so I could reconnected with my therapist from 9-11 days, and I was like, okay, here's what's going on. I'm not doing well. And there were times when the treatment was so horrible, and my my organs would inflame, and I couldn't even lay in bed without being in absolute agony. And I literally wanted out of my body, I would beat the walls. My poor husband would be like, just you're hurting yourself worse. And it was like, it's different kind of pain. I had perfectly I just wanted out of my body, and I had no way out. And I'd saved pills from the surgeries that I had had, and I was like, if I need to take myself out, I will. Like, I I can't do this. Like, there's no survival here that's worth it.

Douglas 46:29

And yeah, I am how long how long did you endure that kind of pain? That was, I mean, that was was that months?

Kim 46:41

Yeah. Yeah. Cause then you'd have to walk back in and go do it all over to stick another.

Douglas 46:46

Was it every it was every time that they were giving you your treatment?

Kim 46:49

Yeah.

Douglas 46:51

Yeah.

Kim 46:52

So I'm in therapy, and Tim drove me to one of the sessions, and he's like, he gets me to the stoop. This is in Albany, and it's all the little brownstones, you know, with the stoops, and he kind of sets me against the post of the stoop, and he's like, I'll go park the car, just wait here. And as he was, I'm still here, like up the standing level, and he's walking toward me, and he's looking down, and I realize my body is now on the steps, and I'm above it, and I'm looking at him from where I've been standing. And he doesn't know, like, he's looking at me, and I'm I remember just thinking, like, how is that how am I even still standing, like sitting upright? Like, how am I not just collapse? Because I'm not in there doing that. I like what part is body, what part is soul? Like, where who am I right now? Where am I? How is this working? It was very confusing, but I was completely coherent. I mean, I wasn't on any like mind-altering medication, and I was wide awake. I was just my body was was dying from the treatment. And yeah, and then it just as fast, I was back in, and then we were going up the stairs, and I'm like, you're not gonna believe what just happened.

Douglas 48:16

So you told him right away that yeah, and then I told my therapist. What was Tim's reaction to that when you're telling him this?

Kim 48:23

I think it was just kind of like whoa. I mean, he was also trying to make sure I was making it up the stairs because you know, he's behind me in case he needs to catch me. So I don't know, I don't I don't know that we actually talked a whole lot about it in that moment. I think we talked more about it on the way home. But um yeah, that was that was wild. And then it happened again. Um that time I kind of you know, you don't trust yourself with these things at first because they're just so abnormal to anything you've ever known. And and I was in the ER having another spiked fever because you this throws your white blood cell count all over the place, and they're testing for infection, and I'm like, it's just the chemo, you know, and and they the mouth sores were so bad. Um, all the skin in my mouth was all coming off, and I had pieces that were stuck to the roof of my mouth that were going down the back of my throat, and I couldn't swallow, and so they had to give me morphine just to be able to swallow. And I was in the hospital, I think three days dealing with that until I kind of got some enough chemo out of my system to like make that stop happening. So the next time it happened was like during one of those serious pain bouts, and they had given me the morphine, but I was like above the bed, and I'm like, oh, it's happening again. But I'm like, now is it the drugs? Like, I don't know. Not quite sure. Um, but uh honestly, I mean, I think in in my heart I know it was the same thing that happened when I was fully coherent. I'm glad the coherent one happened first because then it kind of grounded me when I had the morphine going on. Yeah, and it was like, okay, I can attach myself to some reality even though uh this doesn't feel real. Yeah. And then I started searching for that stuff on my own. It was like, I don't want to wait for this to happen. How do I get there? Yeah, without what'd you find? Um, my therapist was already dabbling in some other things, and she told me she had a tachyon chamber in her basement. I was like, that's what I said. What does that mean? And it's basically it was a recliner, um, leather recliner, brown, kind of like this, and above it was a hexagonal piece of glass hanging from a chain with all these crystals around it. And the theory is in this particular field of science, there's this particle that travels faster than the speed of light, and it has healing properties. And it's possible that it exists. Theoretically, it does. Some people think they've tapped into this and they can channel it, harness it, whatever. And I'm like, I'm dying. What do I care? Like, I'll be jumping, right? Yeah, why not? Here's my $60. I'll sit in your chair, I'll hold these two rods and try to channel this in. She played like this um, you know, different healing frequency. And she said, you know, you have, I think I paid for like half an hour, whatever, in this chair. And she put, you know, an eye pillow over, sprayed some stuff, and walked out of the room. And I was like, I don't know what's gonna happen here, but we'll figure it out. And I'm sitting there in the dark, and this music's playing, and I was like, all of a sudden, and it it happened fast. I felt like I was floating. I don't know if it was through a body or through the universe, but there were these orbs, and I was floating through the blank space between these orbs, and they were lit from one side, so it felt like the universe, like the sun was illuminating planets. I don't know. Um obviously never been here before. So I'm kind of floating through this black space through, and are they blood cells?

Douglas 52:15

I don't know.

Kim 52:16

Going through, and in the distance is this child, and she's naked, and she has long brunette hair down her back, and she's crouched and crying. And I kind of floated behind her, and when she turns her face to me, it's me as a child, and I put my arm around her, and I'm instantly, I felt instantly soothed myself, like I was now mothering the me that had needed that always, and I could be that for myself now in a way that my mother never could. And then next thing I knew, I was I knew I was in the universe, not in a body, because I was looking down at Haynes from above. It was Lutec specifically. Um, I mean, I've I've been here obviously guiding and everything. It's not like it's and I don't know, it just felt like that's where I was supposed to be. And I think, you know, part of what my draw is here, having grown up in New York, is like everywhere you look in New York, you can go to any historical, like you drive down the road and there's all these little plaques that are always like battle of so-and-so happened here, you know, and this battle happened here, and that battle, and it's just like you just I think for me, I feel the blood in the land. Like there's there's been so much conflict and so much death and so senseless death and so much angst, and I feel like that land holds it. Just like I felt it when I went to the site of Wounded Knee, you know. Um there's just there's something there that just, and maybe because it's in my face all the time with those little placards, um, especially living in a little historical town, you know, everywhere you go, that's how it is. Um but you don't have that here. Like there's been conflict, but not that kind of bloodshed, right? Like there's been there's been cultural rifts, there's been there's been the fight for gold, and there's been a lot of, you know, landslides and that kind of thing. But it I I don't necessarily feel like it was the same level of human-on-human slaughter. And even when it has there has been conflict here, it's been in very concentrated small spaces geographically compared with everything around it that's still wild. And I don't know, I think I just felt that here that there's like this white light energy that comes off the mountains that just feels different here. Uh do you do you understand what I'm saying at all? Am I crazy?

Douglas 55:04

No, I I I totally I'm just trying to process this because it's did was it just later in life that you started feeling this? Or was that something that when you were younger you were kind of sensing that when you were in New York and being around that?

Kim 55:18

I don't think I knew it when I was in New York. I think only when I had something to compare it to.

Douglas 55:22

Compare it to that you've but I was like, oh, that feels really crappy there.

Kim 55:27

Yeah, and it feels it doesn't feel that way here.

Douglas 55:30

I was just while you're talking about that, I was just trying to process times what you know, I was at Little Bighorn or Antietam, Gettysburg, Manassas, and just I want to go back to those places now and see if there's that different because I it might have been, but it didn't register with me.

Kim 55:48

Okay.

Douglas 55:48

But now you've got my mind peaked that I want to I need to go back to some of these places and see if I can feel that.

Kim 55:55

Yeah, I and I I wonder if it works the same way in each direction, right? Like I grew up in it and f and and then I come here and I don't feel it anymore, and it was such a like marked difference.

Douglas 56:08

But but also different people have sensities to sensitivities to different things. Not everybody has those same sensitivities, so that could be something that is more unique to you than me. That that's a sensitivity that you know I'm hypersensitive.

Kim 56:24

No, no, but like medical medication-wise, like all things, right?

Douglas 56:27

With all of that going on, that that might be more of a a Kim thing, and I might not be able to feel that, but it does make me want to go back and visit some of these places and just try and be more present. And so for me when I was there, it was just as a history guy, it's like I just wanted to I just wanted to be on the spot. Yeah. Right?

Kim 56:47

And you're just but maybe that's because you maybe that's because you are feeling you're feeling that draw to it.

Douglas 56:52

Yeah, and just but just imagining for me, you know, when I'm Gettysburg in Antietam and just trying to picture the the forces coming from the different areas that they were, yeah, and looking at the places that they were crossing. Who would do that? Right. This is wide open fields, and you've got people marching across us, and these guys are behind the stone wall with cannons and rifles. Yeah, there were muskets at the time or whatever, but it's like who thought that was a good idea? Right, right. That was that was the part that enveloped me, but I want to go back now and and kind of tune in a little bit more and just rest in the area and see if I can pick up on what you're talking about.

Kim 57:39

Yeah, yeah.

Douglas 57:40

I'd be willing to let me know. Yeah, it's no, it's just giving me a whole new sense of that aspect of being in those historical sites. That's not a that's not an avenue that I thought of before. Yeah. But it makes a lot of sense to me that there would be that kind of an aura in that area. Well, thanks for saying it makes sense. But but you would you would just think when there's that much conflict, that much death and injury, and at the scale that it was.

Kim 58:07

How does the earth not absorb that in some way?

Douglas 58:09

With all of that blood coming, there's I can yeah, it it makes sense to me what you're talking about. And I I just want to see if I can feel that same thing. Yeah, yeah. Well, like I said, thank you for thank you for planning one of my next trips. You're welcome. Yeah. Yeah. So that was so you're feeling that, and so Hanes is giving you this with with that out of body of experience where you're kind of seeing that BluTac, so is that what you're like, hey, I need to get back up to Haynes?

Kim 58:41

Yeah, but then there were other, there was one other time I tried the tachyon chamber as well. Um, because I was like, then I was sold, right? Like in this in the first 30 seconds, I had this whole experience. And then the next 29 minutes, I'm like, where'd you go? Where'd you go? I'm just sitting here. It's really quick, but like the most meaningful. I mean, I carried that image with me into every chemo treatment going forward because that was me taking care of me in a way that only I could, you know.

Douglas 59:15

Do you feel then that that helped you get through those continuing? That was a huge help to you? Yeah, because I never knew it was gonna happen. It was totally worth his experience.

Kim 59:23

That was real medicine, right? Yeah, yeah.

Tachyon Chamber And Unexpected Healing

Kim 59:27

So I went back again and that time was a little bit different, equally as quick.

Douglas 59:31

So I didn't pay for the the full second out of the half an hour. We need to renegotiate the right.

Kim 59:43

And uh yeah, so the next time was really weird. It I was actually seeing colors at that point, like these blobs of colors. And at first it was purple with like a blue hue around the outside, and then it turned this putrid line green, and it kind of came up like right here, and then it started pulsing, and then it went. I thought, wow, was I just scanned by something? Like that just felt really like something just was really looking, and um, and then all of a sudden I could see again here, even though I'm in New York, I felt like so. I was walking among the ferns in my head, and I could see their cellular structure with my plain eyes, like the life force in each cell. They were glowing and the wind is blowing them, and they're just like giving off this incredible light. And I was like, this is wild. And then I looked in the mountain, and there was a rock face that caught the shadow just right, and it looked like an actual face. And the next thing I knew, I was underwater and I was face to face with a salmon, and I realized like I don't know if I realized, I felt in that moment that everything was completely connected, like I was part of all of that. And again, a little 30-second not even situation, but it made me feel less alone. Like not only could I take care of myself in a way that I only I knew how, now I knew I was part of something so much bigger. Because I've I've gone through the whole religious side of things. My father, my I was raised Catholic. Um, my best friend's father wanted me to go to his non-denam denominational church. I got sucked into that for a while and became a reborn Christian, got baptized the whole nine yards. And I think with all the abuse that happened in my family that I was praying to be delivered from and never was, I just lost faith. So this felt like me getting my faith back, not in a God, but in the universe as a whole, and that we are part of that.

Souls Trauma And A Kinder Framework

Kim 1:01:57

And then I started exploring more. So it went on from there. Then I started looking on the internet and finding some things that really kind of aligned with my experience and just different theories on souls, and one really, really struck me and it made the most sense to me because it made it feel like the abuse was less cruel and I needed that. So explain that to me. Okay, please. So I have a real hard time with a patriarchal God, especially when everything we see in life, life comes from women. So I feel like the biggest lie we've ever been sold. No offense to anybody who believes, but I never bought into it as a child. I was always the child who questioned because I never thought it was fair that Eve got blamed for everything. So why should I have to carry original sin when she ate an apple that Adam also ate? And like, I mean, even at seven, I was questioning these things, right? I was like always the black sheep in a religious class. But I found a way to seeing, I feel like, not just wanting to believe, but these experiences I had were about seeing that it isn't a man. I think it's whatever that source love life is, is genderless. We have gender here because we have to reproduce, but I don't think souls necessarily have a gender. And I don't know that it's necessarily one godlike entity. I feel like it's a collective soul. And I the best way I can kind of figure out why we're here as we are is if you picture those giant bubbles people blow. Let's say that's your soul, okay? And there's always that drip, right? That kind of comes down and then it pops once the drip. But imagine that you don't pop. This is your soul, but you're not coming, like your entire soul doesn't come here to be in a body. That's gonna sound trippy, I know. It's more like the density of spirit is such that you don't have a physical presence, right? I mean, we that's a kind of our general understanding if we think of spirit. We don't have a density to it, there's no mass. But if we can kind of this drip comes down, comes to earth where everything is all time at all times, all knowledge. You can't grow when you don't have an A and a B, right? So we kind of crystallize into this mass, it's not our whole soul, and this is our humanity. Just this little bit of the soul. Yeah, and it doesn't necessarily mean this is their only little drip either. We may have other drips and other lives and other timelines in this world. That's the part I got off of line, but the rest of it feels like my experience. But that part was kind of a trippy little like, huh? We could be living multiple lives at the same time, learning things as a soul in a way that we couldn't learn in a place that's all time, all knowledge at all times. You could never expand in that, and the universe is expanding. So, how is the universe expanding? Well, maybe it's because we come here and we expand ourselves as all part of that universe. Just that's a lot.

Douglas 1:05:33

That's a lot. That's a lot for me. I'm I'm trying to process this all at the same time. So the the question I have this because you you said that going through that helped you understand some of childhood trauma.

Kim 1:05:47

Yeah. So the reason for that how did that help you? So the theory is we are all souls and we make an agreement to come here. Like we decide. We don't have to be here. This is The hardest school there is, and some people don't if some souls choose not to come. But if we're here, we've come because we know we don't know what we're gonna learn exactly. Well, we we know what we came here to learn, we don't know the method we're gonna learn it. There are so many biological things at play, or just you know, there's gravity, there's like there are all these natural forces at play here that you don't know how it's all going to align. But we do come here to learn something, and we make agreements with other souls for what that will look like in some respect. So let's say you come from a family for me that is not pleasant and it's situated in this mindset of limitation, and you know, there were there were many things, very bigoted ideas in my family. And but that gave me something to push off of because I always felt more open-minded. I was the black sheep forever raising any kind of questions. So I've pushed off and I've now come into this being of who I am. So what if the people who we're pushing off of have made this agreement with us up here on this level that it's not personal? They're doing this so that we escape or we learn something, or we, you know, it's just something to that either pushes us in another direction or teaches us something in that scenario, whatever however it plays out, but it feels a whole lot less personal. It feels like it's not about a God that's punishing you. It doesn't, it's like there are so many things that it erases for me that carry such negativity that I feel like this is the type of belief that I, first of all, have felt, but then that I want to hang on to. Because it's kinder. And there's a lot of really neg like really just real violent scary people in this world.

Douglas 1:08:07

And there are, and we all go through those each of us has a different experience. And we all have bad things that happen to us throughout our life. Yeah. And it's it's in a way, I don't know, fascinate is the right word, but watching how people respond to the bad things that happen, it some sends some people off the edge into worse problems, and other people grow strength from that. And kind of like you're saying, you kind of push back, it's like, okay, this puts me down this road, this has strengthened me, it's giving me this resolve to do this. How do we how do we balance that? Why, why is it that some people is it the support system they have? Is it the belief system that they have? Is it the souls that you're talking about? That was that predetermined that there's they're gonna learn more by going off in this other direction. Right. It's it's always like how where is that balance where some people get stronger and better after a traumatic experience and other people just can't recover from it.

Kim 1:09:22

How does it cascade? Because if somebody does shrink and can't cope, are they being that shrinking person to teach someone else that right?

Douglas 1:09:32

Like, I mean, it could in and then like when they're talking generational trauma, because a lot of that is you know, you you have child abuse, and because usually sometimes those people were abused, but it's kind of this learned behavior of how how you teach how you treat kids or how you treat your spouse, or the the a lot of these are learned behaviors and they're from generation to generation to generation, and trying to break that cycle. Um I need to think about more what you're talking about because I that it does I I understand what you're saying there, and uh, even just like even when a lot of validity to that. Sorry. No, go ahead.

Kim 1:10:09

No, just but just when the slide happened here, like even if it's not a person causing trauma, right? Like the whole town coalesced around helping one another and cleaning up the beach and building a playground and all the things that happened from in the moment seems like and it was not you know minimizing that at all. It was a tragedy, and then all these things happened too, like it all coexists. And I don't know how to make sense of it all. I don't know that there's actually somebody up there planning a map. I don't know that that's true. Um but I do think that we come here knowing that there's going to be risk, that there are gonna be things that are not pleasant, and we may not know what they are, but we came here because we know that they will change us. Just on the most basic level, like that. That feels like that part makes sense to me.

Meeting A Higher Self In Meditation

Kim 1:11:10

And then of course I explored more. And I will tell you this part because this part kind of it really is where I felt everything I just told you that I've been reading. Um, same person, same therapist. She did a guided meditation with me where she asked me just to tap into my creative mind, which is not hard to do. And I laid down on a cot and she basically because it was a guided meditation, she would kind of lead the conversation, but then she would ask me questions and I would fill in the blanks. And so one of them was, you're walking down a uh a well-worn path. Where is it? And I pictured battery point. It's always coming back to here. And um, okay, you're walking down that path. What does that path mean to you? And I'm like, well, clearly it's safe, or at least well traveled, like it's worn. I'm not the first person on it, so I feel comfortable in that. And she's like, What else do you see? Do you see water? Do you see this? Do you see? And the part where my imagination came in was I saw a pond which doesn't exist there. And she's like, Can you go to the edge? Yes, okay. So I go to the edge. She's like, Are you alone? No, I'm not alone. And before we started the session, she was like, I call in on our spirit guides and blah blah blah. Right. And and at this point, I'm still kind of like, I don't know where all this stuff fits. Okay, go ahead, call them in, fine. She's calls in her, she calls in mine, she's like, Oh, your grandparents are here, you know, like okay, cool. And so I'm thinking when I see this being of light at this edge of the pond, that this is a spirit guide going to take me to meet my higher self because this is the point of the guided meditation. This is what I'm paying for. And so she said, Can can you talk to this person? Is it male, female? Can you tell? And I said, It's female. Um it it have you seen Twilight?

Douglas 1:13:17

No.

Kim 1:13:18

The okay, it's the vampire movie. No.

Douglas 1:13:23

I'm not in the vampires, but okay. I've heard about Twilight.

Kim 1:13:26

Okay. The only reason I bring it up, one of the filmic um ways that they they described they you know vampires are not supposed to be in the sunlight, right?

Douglas 1:13:36

Yep.

Kim 1:13:37

The way they depicted it was kind of unique, and what they did was they showed that the vampires turned into almost like diamonds of light. So that's kind of what I saw. I saw a being that looked like diamonds of light, but the light was different colors, so it was blue and silver and purple, like all the cool colors of the spectrum. And it wasn't hair, but it was light flowing off the back of this being's head in long waves. And I went up and um, and my therapist was like, Can you can you speak to her? And I said, Yes. And so we have this conversation, and I said, and and she said she has something for you, which is just part of the guide. That's like normal, that's part of the prompt. And she said, You can either take it into your heart or she can give you something physical in your hands. And what I was given was now, I let me start by saying I went into the session going, I'm dying. I don't know how much time I have left. And I don't know what to do with that time. Like, I feel like I can't start anything meaningful. I feel like I have no purpose because like I finished all my projects. Now what do I like? Where do I go from here? What am I supposed to do with my time? And I got handed a blank slate. And I felt like that meant I can still do whatever I want. Like it doesn't matter about the time, just start it. Like write whatever you want on the slate, and whatever, even if it's not writing, like if it's photography, if it's crocheting a fairy coat for the wearable art show, like um, which I did. Um, you know, whatever it is, like you have a blank slate, you still have just do whatever you want with it. And and it but it felt more meal meaningful than just do whatever you want. Like, like whatever I was gonna choose, I felt like it had weight to it. But now I have like this being, and she's like, you know, can you interact with her in another way? And so she and I danced, but I knew all the moves she was gonna do because she was me, and so we were in perfect sync at the edge of this pond, which was wild, just doing these twirls, and I mean it was amazing. So, okay, I come out of this experience and I go home and I'm like going through all my stuff because I don't want to leave it off my husband, right? I'm literally like reassigning accounts to his name, and I'm cleaning out all my stuff and giving things away, and I find this art journal from four years before. And one of the prompts was draw a self-portrait in crayon and write some words. I don't remember exactly what it was, but write some important words on whatever topic, right? And the image is a woman with flowing purple, blue, green, and silver waves coming off the top of her head. And I don't remember what the words were, but it it was so applicable. And so I sent it to my therapist, and I'm like, this is wild. I'm like, I've already met myself, which makes sense because I am me. So, you know, all of this is starting to come together for me. And she's like, very good, you know? Okay, yeah. So I did it one last time because I I was having a really hard time. This was all still during treatment, so like all of this was you know 2019-ish. And so I do it one more time, and this time felt a lot less profound. And I was like, I don't really feel like I don't know, I didn't get like all jazzed up and my heart didn't race.

Douglas 1:17:26

And did I get all the good stuff on the first ones? Is this diminishing returns? Is that what you're thinking?

Kim 1:17:32

Or the human side of me was like, oh my gosh, this is amazing. But but by the second, after I had like comprehended that I have this higher self, like I never knew what a higher self was until I met myself there. And now it was wild because it felt so familiar that it didn't have that special resonance.

Douglas 1:17:54

Okay, yeah.

Kim 1:17:56

And now we danced. She asked if we could dance again, uh-huh. And this time I was her. We weren't separate, and I knew the moves because I was her, but this time we were both the same person. It was, yeah. And so my therapist said, Listen, you don't need me to do, like, this isn't about me making money. Like, you can access this anytime. You just have to ask for it. And now that you know it exists, it's gonna come whenever you need it. And I had another really terrible night. It was one of those nights where I was thinking about that bottle of pills, and I was just holding my breath so I didn't wake my husband while I was sobbing. And I remember laying there going, I'm not asking for a whole lot. I don't want you to hear like clearly I'm here for whatever I'm here for. I'm not asking to be healed, and not like, but if you could just take some of this emotional pressure away, then I can learn what I'm here to learn. Like, this is crushing. And it felt like these two fingers came down, touched in right here, went right through me, and swirled around, and I'm now stifling giggles. I am now at the point where I can't hold them back, and now I'm trying to wake up with my husband up from those. And that level of depression never came back ever again in all the things that I've had to endure since. Because the comeback of cancer, the trying new treatments, like all the things that I've been through since. Unbelievable. Like, never got that level of depressed, never thought about that bottle of pills again. Um, and I also stopped asking for that access because I felt like I'm here to be human. And there are all these humans that I've been learning about and meeting who are clamoring for whatever's out there, and I'm like, that's not the point of being here. We're here to be here. So I just kind of embraced being human and thought this is this is what it's about right now. I can do that anytime. I'm not here for that.

Choosing Presence Over Chasing The Beyond

Douglas 1:20:11

So I'm sorry if I'm looking dumb fellow here because this is I knew we were gonna have an interesting conversation. Yeah, but this has gone so far past this this has been amazing. The things that you've been sharing.

Kim 1:20:26

It's well, and let me tell you, I've told people in person sometimes, but I've still not even on my YouTube channel told anybody because I'm I know what's coming for me. I mean, I get all the you know, most people, 99.9% of people are supportive, but I know the ridicule that will come. And who cares? This is this is what I'm saying. I don't really, I just don't want that's why I don't want to do it though, because I'm like, I mean, I am here, but I don't want to be sidetracked by it, I guess, is is the thing. And I don't want my people that follow me for my cancer story to be sidetracked by defending me in the comments, because that's also what happens, right? So that's the only reason I've held back, but I've been considering more and more, like actually sharing, because I know that doesn't matter. Um, and maybe it'll give somebody else comfort that feels like the world is against them. Yeah.

Douglas 1:21:22

Do you think you would have been able to tap into that if you weren't going through the cancer and everything that just if you were going to your therapist and she puts you in that seat and everything? Maybe that. Do you think that would have been a little bit more? I don't know that it wouldn't have asked.

Kim 1:21:36

It wouldn't have asked for it. It wouldn't have been like, all right, like what's going on here? I need to I feel like I need to know how this all works. And I I feel like I did at that time. Like I was like, all right, what's next? What am I facing at the end of this?

Douglas 1:21:51

I want to go to New York and go see the see this therapist. I think they have in California too and other places. How do each one of us experience something like that? That's that kind of experience. Because you're not on any hallucinogenic pharmaceuticals at this time. This is an all-natural experience to have this.

Kim 1:22:19

Yeah. Yeah.

Douglas 1:22:22

Wow. Yeah, it was, yeah.

Kim 1:22:24

And I love the fact that my husband's an atheist, so this is really funny because he's like, What?

Douglas 1:22:30

Well, I love the fact of it that you could have continued tapping into this, but the lesson you got out of this is I just want to be present here. This is what I'm supposed to be doing here as a human. That's gonna come later. Yeah. And I and I think in a lot of ways in life we are looking to the future, we're looking tomorrow or next week, what comes later, instead of just where are we today in the present with the people that are around us?

Kim 1:22:56

Yeah.

Douglas 1:22:57

Yeah.

Kim 1:22:58

And so I started really getting out of that. Well, and kind of like the you know, what I just mentioned about YouTube. Like that that's is it insignificant? Yes, but it's also where do I want to spend my energy? Right? Like that's why I I'm making careful choices. Because I don't want to create scenarios where I'm distracted and then feel like I'm drawn into those spaces.

Douglas 1:23:26

And there's it's very easy to get drawn into negative energy. Yeah, there is a lot of that out there.

Kim 1:23:32

Yeah, there can be a thousand really nice comments, and it's the one that will spin me for a day, you know. Yep. Just makes me wonder how people can look at something that is either healing or painful or whatever, however they see the world, and then just that's how they respond. But maybe that's what they're here for.

Douglas 1:23:52

Yeah, that's what they're here for, and I and I think that's just what they've I don't know if they I'm trying to figure out the right way to say this. That are are they scared by what you're talking about? Does that worry them? Does that scare them? Does that unsettle them in a way? Do they try to diminish you because they know they can't feel that or what they feel in that instance is something totally different that might not be as uplifting as the experience you had?

When Strangers Doubt Your Cancer Story

Kim 1:24:25

I think so. With the comments that I've been getting that are you know not aligned with everyone else, um so when I was leaving here last summer, I had opted for no more treatment. I mean, it's just horrific every time I try, and the things that I thought I'd have to go through, I ended up opting for, and they have been as horrific. Um but at the time I was like, no, I'm just gonna go back to New York and enter hospice. And a lot of people were following were following my journey. They saw everybody here at the dumpster fire of goodbyes, everybody coming and writing, you know, F cancer or whatever in a paper, throwing it into our fire, we set it on fire, I drive away. I end up in New York, and you know, everybody's expecting that to be the end. And then my doctor said, You can't do anything diagnostic when you're in hospice. If you want to know exactly what state you're in, because nobody here had ever done a scan. They were just going off of I think they just kept repeating the same thing that every doctor had said without actually looking at what was going on inside. Now, cancer is all through my abdomen, it's around my bowels, it's in it was in my spine, we thought. Um, it's in my ovaries, like it's in a lot of places, but the thing that's gonna kill me is when I have a bowel obstruction. These tumors are gonna grow big enough that that's gonna happen. And so, yeah, I wanted to know what time frame I was looking at. I knew New York was gonna be enacting the death with dignity law, or at least I'd hoped that it was it was really close at that point. And so I wanted to know where am I in all of this? Will I get the chance to choose that? Because I wanted that. Um one thing I learned about bowel obstructions is that even in hospice care with access to morphine or whatever, sometimes it takes three days to get the pain under control. The medication may not be the right medication. They need to experiment with a few things, that takes time. And this could be excruciating. And so while I'm prepared for everything else, that I don't want to experience.

Douglas 1:26:36

You've been through enough excruciating pain.

Kim 1:26:38

Yeah. So, and I don't want my husband to watch all of that. Like what that is just cruel and unusual punishment. Um, yeah. So, so I have this scan, and we find out that yes, all the cancer is still there, but it hadn't grown as fast as they predicted. And so my oncologist said, There's a treatment I have so much faith in. She'd been watching it since the trials. Um she may have even been part of the trials. I think she was, because she was she used to work for um Sloan Cattering in Manhattan. And she said, It's gonna be a little bit of a trick to get you on this. Um, you're not it's not that I didn't qualify for the drug, but the usual ways of determining that were not registering. So insurance, you know, probably wouldn't have covered if I didn't. So she was she's very smart. This is why I love her. She's kept me alive for seven years now. Um and she found a genetic test that insurance didn't want to pay for, but they accepted the results that said that while the genes express different things, and so one of the things is the HER2 gene expression, and if you're very low in that, this drug. Does it really well for people with breast cancer like I was showing it as her two zero, meaning I didn't I I wasn't eligible. But she said that's in trials now, they're gonna start using it in that way for people that don't register. But I did register in this other task. So anyway, I ended up falling into that that category. Justified it, and turns it bought into the whole the whole line of how this works. Four months I spent trying to get the dose right so that I could be sitting here now. I it was four months in bed. It was horrible. Um the first time I I was in the ER because I was having cognitive issues where I would look at different places in the room and my brain wouldn't track with my eyes. And then I couldn't reach for words. And we were like, is this what what is happening to my brain? This is not good. So I ended up in the ER, they gave me a lumbar puncture. I don't the one drug I don't overreact to is lidocaine and novocaine, the two drugs. Um and that's what they were putting in my my lumbar section to do the lumbar puncture, and I felt all of it. And so that was that was excruciating. And it went, I felt like it just never ended. They just kept digging, and then they never even got the sample. Um I go through all of these other things. Now I'm posting on YouTube with okay, well, we tried this and this is what I'm experiencing, right? And I'm getting comments saying, How are we supposed to follow this girl? Like, first she's dying, then she says goodbye to all of her friends. She goes all the way to New York, and now she's apparently fine enough to go back to Alaska. They clearly hadn't been watching the whole time, right? But whatever.

Douglas 1:29:53

And then they said they're ticked off that you're still alive.

Kim 1:29:57

Yeah. I'm still alive. But I think what was happening because some of the comments started adding up, and I could track that person where they had commented. I get so many comments, I couldn't like remember whose name was what and and who said what. And when I found where they had been commenting, I got to a story of I lived with somebody who died from cancer. Okay. And they didn't look anything like you.

Douglas 1:30:23

Okay.

Kim 1:30:24

And what you're doing is lying to everybody.

Douglas 1:30:27

They think this is of a ruse. Yeah. That this is just a story to get.

Kim 1:30:31

Yeah. Which, as a woman, not being believed is a really difficult thing in general. You know, sexual assaults and like all the things, right?

Douglas 1:30:40

People not understand that everybody has their own, not everybody's gonna look the same that goes through cancer, not everybody's gonna look the same that has whatever illness or whatever thing we have in life.

Kim 1:30:50

One would hope, but no.

Douglas 1:30:52

Yeah. No.

Kim 1:30:53

And I and I would explain, I would take the time to explain. Like, listen, bowel obstructions are not a problem until they're a problem. Like, you go on with life as normal.

Douglas 1:31:03

And and unfortunately, though, can't do there are people that do that, that fake this to get money to get sympathy.

Kim 1:31:11

Which is funny because like I think I make I I probably make like I put one video on it, it took me four hours to put together. And with all the people that have watched it, I think I've made a hundred dollars. It's not worth it.

Douglas 1:31:20

No, but I mean there's there's people that go out to their community and go do GoFundMe's and stuff like that. Right, right. And it's not that it's a YouTube thing, but there's other ways that they raise crazy amounts of money, and then it finds out that oh, they were never sick to begin with. Right, right. And so it's it can be hard for a lot of people to not. Which is this? True. We were told it was gonna go down this road, and instead of being happy that Kim's still with us, right? They're looking at it's like, well, the person that I loved didn't get they didn't get that extra chance that Kim got. And so they're probably upset at that, and they've heard enough stories of people that were faking that they're like, and some of it could just be the resentment that the person that they loved they didn't get that second chance with. Yeah. Which sucks for them. Yep. But we should still be happy that Kim's still here. I am. We should be able to I am. But it but how come we can't have both feelings? How come we can't be sad that that person didn't get as much? But they take that anger and that sadness and they hold it against you because you had a bet you've had a better outcome to this point, and we don't know how much longer that's gonna last. Right.

Kim 1:32:34

But and then there are people who don't like the hospice care here, like they don't understand that there's not a a medical component that is reliable, right? That our doctors also work in the clinic. We don't have a hospital, like there are limitations here, and people were calling me a liar because I was signed up for hospice here and I did it myself, which you can't do in the lower 40. You can't sign yourself in, right? Like you get you need a recommendation from a doctor, and then it's people who know how to deliver medication, right? You don't have the same services here. Well, that earned me badge of liar as well. Um, so I'm gonna point them to your podcast with Shannon and tell them that that is absolutely real. But I don't like again, I don't want to waste my time in the space either, because if people don't understand, they don't want to know. They're not asking a question, they're telling me who I am, which means that they're not willing to listen anyway.

Douglas 1:33:30

They don't want to listen, they have their own story, and it goes beyond just cancer, grief, dying. That in so many ways in our society that people they have their story, that's their life experience, and they have a r they have very difficult time accepting that somebody else has had a different life experience, yeah, and being able to relate to that person has a different idea, different outcome. They think, well, I did this, this, and this. The the outcome should be the same. It's not the same for everybody. Right. We all have our own path to go down. Yeah. I'm sorry you're having to deal with that. It's it's enough that your health issues are enough that you've been battling for seven years.

Kim 1:34:15

Exactly. And then this was not a channel I planned on starting. This channel started accidentally, which is a weird story too.

The Accidental YouTube Video That Blew Up

Kim 1:34:23

Tell us. But um how'd that start? So I was here for the winter overseeing um our house, the final building. Tim was back in New York, and that's when we learned that my the drugs that I was, oral drugs I was taking were no longer keeping cancer at bay.

Douglas 1:34:41

Okay.

Kim 1:34:42

And so I'm here alone in the winter. And that's when I decided I wasn't gonna go forward with treatment, right? And then so Tim came back for that summer, and then we went back to New York for hospice care because that's just the the general time frame. I was really upset because I was told that the medication I was on could buy me up to 10 years, and I was like, I'm gonna get 20 out of it, you know. I was all like positive energy, right? And I got seven months, so I felt really cheated. Um, I wasn't sure that anything else was gonna work. Feeling pretty defeated, and I had Tim and I had been in dog rescue for decades, and so I had this old channel from like 20 years ago where I used to do, you know, animal videos, and nobody's used it since. So like that was I I think I might have put some puppy videos up when we got our Newfoundlands, and that's about it, but nobody watched them, so I was like, okay, this is probably a safe space to put a longer video and then just give links to my family because I couldn't make that phone call over and over and over again. I was just yeah, it was exhausting, just having one and then have to go.

Douglas 1:35:51

Yeah, just send the link to everybody. Yeah, so I can't imagine how emotionally draining that would have been to make those phone calls.

Kim 1:35:59

It's a lot, it's a lot because you're breaking someone's heart with every single phone call and having to relive it over and over again. So so I yeah, I did this. It's just me sitting on my couch talking into my phone. This is the lowest key thing ever. I throw it up there and I share the link, and then the numbers start going up, and then they keep going up. And next thing I know, I get a phone call from some woman on the East Coast whose mother took turkey tail, and she thinks I should do that too. And then, like, I was getting emails through my work web, my art website um that wasn't even really ready for like consumption yet. But people were looking for me, and what happened was the link was on threads because I didn't realize when I posted to my friends on Facebook that my account was attached to threads. Okay, and people on threads are not like Facebook, like they they boo, these are strangers who buoy you up. Like, I feel like it's a huge support group over on threads, it's kind of an amazing place. And all these people started commenting, and it went up in the algorithm, which meant more people watched the video. So back on YouTube, yeah, that algorithm was getting kicked off. Somehow, it must have taken off really fast. Like a lot of people in a really short amount of time, because then YouTube put it on its front page. Oh wow. And I had like, I mean, I'm talking like in an hour, I had like 180,000 views, which I was not prepared for, I will tell you.

Douglas 1:37:37

And in the video, you're just doing it for your family and friends. Yeah. And now you've got 180,000 people that have watched it. Yeah.

Kim 1:37:45

Yeah.

Douglas 1:37:47

How how what was that feeling like? It was overwhelming. Um this was a pri kind of a private thing that you were doing.

Kim 1:37:56

Yeah, and it's not that so my cancer was never private. When I was my first diagnosis, um, you know, back in 2019, I shared like I would journal right and then just post it straight to Facebook.

Douglas 1:38:11

Okay.

Kim 1:38:11

And that was my way of coping because I felt like those are my friends, right? Those are people I know, but I could reach a wider audience. But then people were like, wow, I didn't even know cancer patients went go through that. Like, I don't even know that they could feel that trapped in their body or that your organs can swell and you can't roll over. Like, I I know people who have cancer. They're like, I have friends who have cancer who don't talk about any of that. Yeah, and so I kept writing. So, like that part was semi-public. This was a whole different, whole different ball game. And it got I have to say, it was a little scary because now it's like the it felt like the world, even though I mean that's not a huge amount in the grand scheme of things. There are people who have millions, but uh it was a lot. It was a lot, and and that the and that they were reaching out to me in places that they could touch me, right? Through my phone, through my work website, through you know, emails. Um and and some of the stuff is hard to take because it was a lot of personal stories in return, and I wanted to hold them all.

Douglas 1:39:20

Like you Boy, that's an awful lot, Kim. Yeah, you've got you've got your own story going on, and then everybody, a lot of people sharing theirs, yeah, and trying to hold those.

Kim 1:39:30

And it's impossible. I mean, I I couldn't I couldn't do it all. I would for hours just sit and respond to people and be like, I hear you, even if that's all I could say. It was just like, I hear you. But um, but there was something that was interesting. So one of the things that I had, there were two things I said that were really fascinating, the way that they played out. Because one of them was to my family saying, I'll keep you in the loop as things go forward, which the whole world now thinks that that's what I meant. That's it, that you can keep them in the loop. And then the other thing was the only regret I had was never getting my art situated enough to sell it before I was gone. Like for more people to see it. It wasn't about the selling so much, which I mean that's important, but nobody'd seen it. I had hard drives worth of stuff that I've never shown the world. Some of it I haven't even looked at since I shot it. So um, so the two things that came out of that were people craving conversations about death. And I'd already had all those thoughts years ago of what this means for me. And so I started sharing more about that, and then I did a couple QA's, and then I mostly ended up doing like health reports because now people were invested. And if I didn't show up every two weeks, people would be like, Well, are you okay? Are you still alive? So I keep going back, but yeah.

Douglas 1:40:56

I imagine there's times it's extremely tough for you to do that, especially when you're getting some of the the you get an overwhelming positive but the negative comments. But I think being able to share that as honestly as you do brings comfort to a lot of people that have family or friends that are going through that. They don't they might not want to ask those questions, but they're hearing that from you, and so they get a better sense of what the people close to them are going through. Right. It's a gift.

Kim 1:41:29

I wish I had had it. I wish I had known, not just for me, but for my friends before me, you know. Um, and so I I see the value in that. That's the only reason I would I keep doing it. Like it's it's a pain in the butt. It's not an easy task. You know, I I spend so many more hours editing than I do putting it together or re-recording a sentence I wish I had said that earlier.

Douglas 1:41:53

You need a Sam or a Marty.

Kim 1:41:54

I need a Sam or a Marty.

Douglas 1:41:57

They're amazing at that. Yes. My editing is so smooth. Yeah. I just as soon as we wrap up, I you know, they take the discs and away they go, and then it shows up. That's amazing. You need a Sam or a Marty. I need a Sam or a Marty. Yeah, I can I can I can put you in touch with Sam and Marty if you want to use their resources.

Kim 1:42:16

So good to know. Yeah. Good to know. But yeah, it was, it's it's mostly because I see

Tiny Joy Steps That Change A Day

Kim 1:42:22

what happens. There was a woman once, and and this one I put in my journal because I just wanted to hold on to the story, but she was like, How do you, even in the bad days, like keep getting up and doing it all over again? She had had oral some sort of oral cancer, and so they had to remove part of her jaw. Like she had a tube that was going in through her face. She didn't want to go outside. She felt her words, not mine, but hideous. Um she was living with her husband and didn't want him to look at her. She didn't want to get out of bed in the morning. And like, people like that are the ones that really get me. Oh, absolutely. I didn't think I had anything to say. And all I said was find the tiniest, the tiniest thing that is one hair better than the other thing that you're doing, and do that thing. If you're drinking a cup of tea, can you spice it up? Can you wear a tiara while you're drinking it? Like some I don't care what it is, but do something that is just a little bit better than what it was before, and then build on that. The next step. Choose something that brings you a little bit more joy than where you are right now. You're not looking for yourself to be like completely soothed. You need to climb out one little bit of joy at a time. And she wrote me back the next day and she said, I did it. I did it. She said, I made myself a special drink. I even got dressed up and went out with my husband to the garden store and bought flowers. I dropped some off with a friend on the way home. And then I came home and I put them in my garden. Like she changed her whole day by drinking a different cup of tea. Different cup of tea, yeah. And I just thought, oh my gosh. And that was something I heard from someone else that helped me. It's not like I came up with something genius. I just shared it and and it helped somebody. And then I was like, I can't, I can't not share things that help me, right? Yeah. Because it mattered to me, it mattered to her.

Douglas 1:44:40

You see that quite often, where a smile or just a word of encouragement, just a little bit, you don't know, you never know in the moment what thing that you might say or gesture you might do that uplifts somebody else that's you don't know what they're going through. In your case, you knew what that person was going through. But in our everyday life, the the people around us oftentimes you have no idea the struggles that they're having.

Kim 1:45:11

And we all have them. We all have them. We try to we end up ranking them against somebody else, but it doesn't matter. Like your struggle is your struggle. It doesn't matter that someone has it worse. Like it's real, it's real to you, and that matters.

Douglas 1:45:26

And how do we give them that little bit of ray of sunshine that gets them like that cup of tea that gets them to that next step? Right. But you just build on that. I think that's great advice, Kim. Just do something, just a little bit. Yeah. If you look at the big hole, if you look at the big picture, it gets daunting as heck. Well, it's kind of like that old saying, How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Right. You know, it's just that one you gotta take the first little step and then another little step. Yeah. And there's probably gonna be setbacks. But you just take another step. Yeah. Which is e a lot easier to say than actually do.

Kim 1:46:04

Yeah.

Douglas 1:46:05

Yep. Yeah.

Watching 9 11 From New Jersey

Douglas 1:46:11

So should we pivot back to 9-11?

Kim 1:46:14

Sure. Because that's easy.

Douglas 1:46:17

Just go to a lighter topic, not yeah. So you were were you on duty on September 11th?

Kim 1:46:25

No, I was in recurrent training. So I was it was my fourth year flying internationally, and um the the job had been super light up until then. I was actually, I remember thinking, like, this feels like it doesn't have any bigger purpose for me. I love that I get to see the world. Um, I had 24 hours in every city that I could just go play. And so I'd go see Shakespeare plays in Stratford upon Avon, or I'd go see The Last Supper, or walk on top of you know, the Duomo in Milan, or like just all these really cool experiences. Um, I wish I was a photographer then. Um but I was back in New Jersey, Secaucus, New Jersey. Um, that's where our training center was for Continental at the time. That was the airline I worked for. And I was cramming for weapons identification, for hijacking scenarios, I was cramming for, you know, delivering a baby in the in the back alley, like, you know, all the all the things I need to know, how to deploy the slide, all the things. And, you know, that first one on the list I did not think I'd ever need. And I'm so I'm anyway, I'm downstairs in the lobby and kind of cramming through my book. And all of a sudden, two people go running by and they're like, you can't see it from here. And I'm like, see what? And they're like, come with us, and we went up one floor and the building's all windows, right? And we're facing Lower Manhattan. And the first plane had gone in, and of course we thought it was an accident, as others have been. And as we're watching the smoke bellowing out, we watched the second plane hit. And then we knew, you know, something was happening.

Douglas 1:48:10

You're in Sakakas, New Jersey, looking at this happen in real life. Yeah.

Kim 1:48:16

Yeah. So we didn't have, I mean, it's another time, right? Like you've got flip phones and you have our our televisions were not all hooked up to cable there. We had uh VHS players, and it was a training center. You just put the VHS in that you needed, you only use the TV for that. So we were trying to get a channel on it, but we we could get like, I don't remember if it's UHF or VHF, the fuzzy one, right? And um, and we've caught a Spanish channel, and somebody there kind of knew Spanish and heard only something about, and I don't know why they would even know these words, but they understood something about remote control cockpit was were the words that they pulled out, and terrorist attack. I don't know if they had the word terrorist specifically, but we all kind of interpreted that after the fact. And I mean it was obvious, you know. I mean, your your brain just goes there. And then our trainers came in and they gave us the official word and told us what was what they knew was going on because it was unfolding. You know, people didn't know minute to minute you'd you'd get a little bit more news. Now that plane went down at the Pentagon, and you know, it so as the towers were burning, I was trying to call my mom in Manhattan. She's lived there since I was seven. Um my stepdad had a studio in the in lower Manhattan. I didn't know where he was. Um I it was it was a lot of chaos. They wanted us to go to um Newark International Airport and evacuate it because they could know we were educated at least in where to go and all of that so we were gonna they were gonna get a bus and take us over and in the middle of all of this people were told just to hunker down and sit still so as we're sitting on this floor people there's a payphone but people are trying to use their flip phones and the cell service is all jammed but when people could get through I heard people next to me begging their parents not to jump from the top of the towers and then I get in the elevator because I'm like oh my god and I get in the elevator to go to my car so I could at least be by myself and I knew that there was a flight ban okay but I get in the elevator and there are two women in there holding onto each other and they're crying because they put their best friends on the flight from Boston to New York to come party that night. And they were the ones that that crashed and so I went out to my car and I'm I can't find it and I'm calling my ex-boyfriend at this point I'm living in Albany with a a somebody or I moved there with with somebody and then we broke up and now I've got this new lease by myself and I'm like do I even have a job like I don't even know now but I'm trying to call him because we're still friends and I get a hold of his dad and his dad's like you know where is he? And I'm like I don't know I thought maybe you would know because I can't reach him and he's like oh my god he's not in New York City is he and I'm like no no no he's in Albany I'm in you know near near New York City I'm like I'm the one that's here I'm just trying to talk to him about what I'm seeing. He's safe okay and I get on the phone with him finally and I'm turning around trying to find my car I can't remember what level I parked like I'm my brain is not registering anything that's going on and I'm on the phone with him and this helicopter starts hovering over the parking garage and there's a flight van and I'm like who the F is that am I next? Not like it didn't make any sense like why would they target a training like I mean after the fact you but when you're sitting there under a helicopter during a flight ban after a terrorist attack you're not making sound judgments right so I ducked behind this green pickup truck and I curled into a ball and I just started rocking going oh my god oh my god oh my god yeah I thought it was over then I thought I was gonna be done and I did find my car and I started driving back to Albany and it was the most beautiful day. I remember being really ticked that I didn't bring my camera that morning because the mist from Albany to New York was just hanging between the trees and the sunrise was coming up it was so beautifully gold lit like all that mist was lit in gold and anyway I'm on my way home and I missed my exit for Albany because the the traffic was ridiculous. I mean people are driving on the side of the road people are shouting at one another and I'm on my phone with my dad there were no cell phone laws at the time and and I'm like I'm telling him what happened and he's not getting any of it he hadn't seen the news he'd been at the park feeding the geese he has no idea what I'm talking about he's like you realize what you're talking you're you sound like you're talking about the world of the worlds and I was like this is real turn on your television and somebody cut me off uh from the shoulder of the road and I remember just yelling in obscenity and I'm like I have to go but that's how I missed my turn and I had to drive back and when I turned back I had already in from the parking garage watched the second tower crumble and so I knew it was just pillars of smoke at this point but I had to turn back and just keep driving toward it until I got back to turn. I stopped at a um rest area and it was so bizarre because people just they knew it they had heard about it but they're still ordering McDonald's and that just nothing felt more bizarre to me than seeing people just milling about doing normal things. And Howard Stern was on the radio clamoring for war and I was like we don't even know who did this who are we supposed to bomb like what on earth and nothing made sense and so I got to Albany and some friends of mine were there um I was sharing the apartment I think at that point with another woman and and she and her friends were like you know let's go out to the park and I was just like looking at the Corning Tower going I I can't be here. Like this all just feels too dangerous. It's a really tall building yeah and so what I didn't know at the time was like I was already starting to react in ways that were you know very PTSD and I would sit and watch television 247 I wouldn't sleep because I kept looking for the same image I saw and couldn't find it anywhere. And I was like maybe it's not real if I don't see it you know and the things that just weren't making sense. So this is why I got a therapist but um yeah it was my my parents were my father and I have a both my parents I have not spoken to in decades um but at the time I was still connected with them and my dad's like a week after I got called in to fly the first flight out of Newark to Birmingham England. And I was supposed to take the people who were stranded in Halifax, Nova Scotia for that week. They were coming from Birmingham to begin with to go through Newark to Orlando to bring their kids to Disney. They get stuck in a sports arena for a week being donated food and blankets and then they get shuttled back to Newark where I'm now taking them back to Birmingham. So I showed up ahead of time I was telling my mom I can't do this I can't get back on that airplane I'm like I I know what happened to those flight attendants I know they're head their throat slit like they canceled our training program and said none of it's valid anymore.

Douglas 1:56:38

Like everything we've taught you is we gotta redo it.

Kim 1:56:41

Yeah yeah and I'm like so how do I stop a terrorist I I basically felt like I couldn't wear the stripes anymore is what it came down to is like the responsibility of the stripes. Could I fly as a civilian maybe but definitely not as a flight attendant expected to save somebody I had no rule book for that. And so my mom was like I think you're overreacting. I think they probably have things in place now and I'm like they don't I'm like they have pilots coming through security with knives and guns just to see if they can do it and they're doing it I'm like we know that you can smuggle things on these planes now. We we know from firsthand from the pilot I'm flying with you know like and you know these people that were standing at security from the National Guard or whoever got sent in they they were carrying weapons that had no ammunition in them like and what are you gonna do shoot up an airport with an automatic weapon? Like what? Like this doesn't none of this makes sense and my dad was like just get back on the horse so I went to see my um my supervisor who I always got along with great and she wasn't in and the guy that was taking her place he started yelling at me and he's like if you can't get on that airplane you don't deserve to be a flight attendant you're gonna lose your job your health insurance you won't be able to pay your rent and I'm like I can't pay my rent now and I just felt like it was coming at me from all sides like just get on the plane and so I got on the plane and I cried in the galley as people were boarding as I was prepping the meals and people were crying with me because they got on and they got in their seats and they were terrified to fly. I'm not giving them any confidence and then I have the jump seat that faces the back of the plane so I'm facing all these scared people and we are all and then they turn the lights out because this is a night flight. This is this is going to England it's you know later in the season dark already six o'clock whatever and um we turn off the lights and now the cabin's dark and that's what it was like when those flight attendants had their throats lit. So yeah I'm crying they're crying we take off and when we get there I had put in for I got a an email saying that the company was providing company offered leaves if you wanted to sign up now you could check my name off that or on that list like yeah I had no plan but I knew I couldn't do this anymore and I came back I was granted the leave and then I was like now what um I got out of my lease I moved in with a friend in a small town of like 400 people outside of Albany and it's this historical little town no street light no pizzeria no nothing and I lived with her for a little while and then I moved into a house down the street that I think the owner lived in Colorado. He was a master gardener who bought this little this little colonial house. And I moved in there and it was kind of falling apart and so for rent I would paint walls or tend the garden and send in pictures of what I had fixed and the floors I had stained and and I just became a hermit for three years basically couldn't leave the house drank a lot and I got side jobs for the Edmund Niles hike preserve so I worked with a scientist basically collecting leaf litter out of the forest floor counting how many bugs were in it for a salamander study like just random scooping chicken crap out of farms for $25 a day like I didn't care. I didn't want to go corporate after what corporate made me feel and yeah.

Three Years Of Isolation Then A Turn

Douglas 2:00:52

So what after three years what kind of what was the turning point that brought you out of that I think I just got real tired of it.

Kim 2:01:02

I was tired of being so cut off and I was like I remember like specifically thinking it's time to get back to life. I don't know what that looks like but it's time and my friend Deb was like you should you should start dating again I was like I don't know but Match Talkcom had just come out and it wasn't the cool thing to do at that time. Like you actually I remember one of the commercials was that um it was a couple with a picture of the the Eiffel Tower behind them and they took a picture of it and they sent it to their parents as though it was a postcard and that they met at the Eiffel Tower when they actually met at the match.com. Yeah it was at that time of the the whole setup of it but I did I made my um I made my profile and had a couple of people that I just I had conversations with and it was like oh how many times do you go to the gym and I was just like okay no and my you know my profile said you know I I find joys in the small things in my garden as much as like the larger you know scenes of life as an international flight attendant blah blah blah. And so I find this pro oh no I I think he found me oh he found me so I get this email saying I saw your profile I'm a what did you say tree hugging liberal do gutter lawyer who does dog rescue on weekends and um and you know I know you had to pick an age bracket but it was an age bracket. It was like either 30 to 39 40 it wasn't like 10 years within your age no it was just what it was and at that time I was 33 and so the email says I'm a I'm a little bit outside your age bracket but in dog years I think it's okay. And I was like okay this could be fun. Well it was Tim my husband now of 20 some years. Don't make me do math I'm terrible at math but he uh he and I emailed a couple times and then we ended up on the phone for three hours and this is when Lacey Peterson had gone missing in California and so she was pregnant and she goes missing and he's like what happened the husband was you know they all thought it was him and so now I'm going on this blind date and I had a housemate that lived downstairs at the time so I told him I'm leaving all the con all the information on my computer. Like I'm missing this is the dude and I looked up his last name and I was I he had told me what it was but on the phone but he um I don't think I'd ever I don't know if I'd ever seen anyway whatever I googled him and I spelled it which people do to me all the time though and I'm like oh no I get it it's okay um I've done that too because I I was I don't know if I was thinking Clooney so C-L O O N or I don't know anyway I Google him I can't find him and I'm like well this feels sketchy you know and so I go to leave the house this was actually very funny and my cat an indoor cat decides to make a break for it as I open the screen door my roommate is behind me housemate whatever he's he'd come up the stairs he's behind me going out the main door and he's going out for cigarettes and I was like okay cat goes running out I go to grab the cat. John's behind me I can't back up door comes back hooks me under the eyebrow I'm like I'm going on a first date oh and to back it up so when Tim said you know this phone call seems to be going well I I don't know if this is presumptuous but are you free next weekend I was like I don't know about next weekend but I'm free tonight. Free tonight so he lives a half hour outside of Albany I'm half an hour the other way we meet in Albany go to this um restaurant called El Mariachi and he's his profile says he's always on time he's punctual yeah it's like okay I get there like 15 minutes early I sit on the bench outside and like I'm checking people out as they go by I'm like I hope that's not him yeah I hope that's not him because people lie you know and so I'm like punctual my aunt like five minutes after the time and the door swings open and then and two heads come out and it's the waitress on the phone and it's Tim with this beaming smile he locks eyes with me and she's like calling the sister restaurant wondering if I'm there. He got there earlier than me and he was in time between the whole I love it I love it. Yeah and I think it was destined to be because um we had a three hour dinner and in the middle of it we were talking about being a flight attendant and he's talking about climbing mountains across the world and as we're sharing stories I was telling him about being in Quito Ecuador at one point and there was a coup on the day I arrived and he was like I was there during a coup. I was ice axing up these volcanoes and I was like what you guys are in Ecuador at the same time and then trying to get out of the airport the exact same time and never knew each other.

Douglas 2:06:29

Is that not wild? That is totally crazy.

Kim 2:06:32

Yeah yeah yep so that's how I got back to life cool that was that was yeah then it was dates and going hiking and doing things outside of the little town that I was now living in and then I moved into them. Just needed the right person to reawaken you yeah went back to school and then the photography thing happened.

Douglas 2:07:01

So no that's uh going back to the 9-11 thing I I I was my sister and I were in a trade show in Reno, Nevada when that happened and we were there um we gone over before the trade show opened and we're looking at these samples and this guy that I knew from Wisconsin he's like crazy about what's going on in New York hadn't had the TV on that morning and had no idea what was going on. It's like yeah New York's always crazy he goes not crazy like this what's he talking about and we kind of then we heard we were heard some other stuff and I said we need to go back to the room and see what's going on. And like and then we're stuck in Reno for like four days before four or five days whatever it was till we could the flight band until we could get a flight out. Yeah yeah we were the first flight out of Reno like first one into C CTAC on the way back and that there I've never felt so much tension you were the opposite side of what was on my plane. Yeah it was just it we weren't overseas or anything but just in the US and no but what I mean is like I was afraid looking at it the passengers but you were the one in the passenger side for for me it was you could feel the tension but uh I I think it was kind of just a fatalistic thing. It's like I think it's probably gonna be the safest flight I've ever been on in my life. Right. Because there was and a couple of us were talking in that area it's like after what just happened the chance of somebody getting on this flight and doing anything this is probably going to be the safest flight we're ever going to be on in our life is this one right now. And there's a guy I think he was a row behind us that he was a pilot dead heading back to where he was from and he's like yeah I think this one's pretty good. Yeah and so I I wasn't you could still you can feel the tension but I really wasn't worried about it yeah for that reason that if they make something happen on this one that that that's going to be life but the chances of that are pretty low. So I've I felt there's other times I've been nervous about flights but that one there I was like I think this one's good. Yeah they but it was you that was a feeling that I've never felt before or since for that whole what is two hours or whatever from Reno to Seattle that was a very unsettling feeling the whole way.

Kim 2:09:30

So were you at that point they didn't have you know Wi-Fi in the cabins or anything like you're cut off.

Douglas 2:09:36

You're cut off you get on the plane there's whatever they're telling you is the only news you're getting while you're on there. Yeah yeah and then your head starts playing tricks and yep you're playing all the scenarios yep yeah yeah two hours and then you gotta lay over and then you gotta get on another one from Seattle to June so you got another two and a half hours and then it's like and then you're you're thinking well they usually want to do a big splash right so June probably not probably not Seattle probably not Seattle might have been right but yeah you're just trying to figure out the that thought process on which one and and yeah you're thinking about that that whole time yeah but I as unsettling that was I can't imagine being on the other side because like you were saying you have that responsibility to protect us. Right that's a that's a lot to carry right after that that you're getting on an international flight going.

Kim 2:10:41

That was the reason I couldn't do it anymore. It wasn't for fear of the plane or anything like that. And you know when we were in training they always told us if you ever see any kind of accident with a plane like it's really gonna mess with your head because that's the platform you work on every day. Yeah and now it is no longer considered safe. So they had an employee systems program right and they always gave that number out and at trainings and and at this one you know it was like they were definitely pushing it. But they also reminded us that we were not allowed to speak about this with anybody because we had signed our contract saying that if there was ever an incident or an accident we would never discuss it publicly. And so a lot of us had to carry that by ourselves because when you're a flight attendant for a company that big you can fly for a month with somebody because you get the same monthly schedule as there's your crew but then the next month it's an entirely different crew to a different destination and you may never see the people you flew with last month ever again. The crews are so it the base is so big and you can rotate through people endlessly before you ever had to meet the same person on a flight. So you don't necessarily build up huge friendships in this job. And you're away 15 days out of the month, so building relationships at home is not easy either. And you I've just relocated to a city, you know. I mean, it it was just it was a lot of different things, so I felt very isolated in that way. Well, of course you would. Yeah. But the the silence uh uh on behalf of the company was really devastating. There were people who wanted to do interviews and talk about, you know, I mean, you're you're talking about how safe you felt on your flight, right? Given things are probably in place, they were putting all these things on the news to make sure that the stock market rose back up out of the out of the car.

Douglas 2:12:35

Whether it was actually safe or not, I have no idea, but it's seemed like I was and I think part of that was just me telling myself for these reasons this is gonna be safe because otherwise I never would have gotten on the plane.

Kim 2:12:46

Yeah, of course, you have to. You have to because you have life has to go on and you can't be stuck in this place that you were visiting for forever, right? But also, and I think listen, they put things on in place, and I think that they had that intended effect because people like you or a million of my other, you know, people that I knew all felt the same way. Like, why what are you so worried about? The reason I was so worried is because I had those pilots that were sneaking things on to test the system. I had, I'm not it's not to say that I didn't know people in the company. I did. There were people that I became friends with in training who then, you know, we'd follow each other outside of work, you know, and hang out. But I'm talking about like making new relationships on the planes were not was not easy. But I had friends in the company, and so, you know, we were talking about how there had just been a group that had gone down to Rio, and somebody hijacked their crew bus from the airport to the hotel, took all their uniforms, all their passports, and left with them. But that didn't make the news, like, but we know this because we're all part of the same company, and and and the word travels, you know, um, because we're all looking out for each other. So it it there were things that I knew, and and my parents were like, oh, that's crap. That that's that's not real. And I'm just like, no, what you're seeing isn't real. Yeah, like, and then when that plane went down, what a month later in Jamaica Bay, I was there and I was putting my shoes on to go outside. I was visiting my mother, and the on the television is the plane. I wish at that point we had the cell phones we have now because I wish I had filmed it. I know what I saw, and then I know what got switched. But they showed a reporter standing with the back of the plane visible and still burning. And they're telling us it's not a terrorist attack, but the plane's still on fire. There's been no investigation. The stock market is tanking. The image behind him was a fuselage, the back, one of the doors in the fuselage blown out. And they tried to tell us that the plane fell off, the tail of the plane fell off because bolts came loose. And I never saw that clip again from that angle again on television and the stock market recovered. So I I, you know, there are some things that you know get played out a certain way on purpose. And I'm not saying this as like a conspiracy theorist where I feel like you know there's deep state and they're da-da-da-da-da. But there are financial interests that have a lot of power, and a phone call saying, hey, let's not say this right now will help the stock market probably did. Those things happen every day. We know that's true. So I think on that kind of level, these things were happening. I don't think it was some concerted effort. I'm not entirely sure that I buy into even the most plausible theories about you know, all of this being an inside job. I I don't I'm not one to fall for those things, but I can't deny the things I saw either. So yeah.

Douglas 2:16:13

That's kind of great. Because as you're talking about this, I'm almost done with the uh I've been watching the Netflix series on Pan Am 103.

Kim 2:16:19

Oh, I haven't seen that. Okay.

Douglas 2:16:21

Yeah, it just started in was it uh December of 88 when got blown up and crashed over Lockabee. And uh I remember when it happened at the time, but then now they're kind of going through and telling, telling the story of it, and it's some of that same stuff. You know, Pan Am with the like they were the world's largest airline, or at least the United States' largest airline at the time, and they've got their report and that says that oh, it was this, this, and this, and and uh everybody else like no, this or this, and try and point fingers, and like you said, they're trying to Pan Am didn't want anything to point at them because those lawsuits that were coming their way were gonna be a lot of money, and if they could point the finger somewhere else, make a big difference for them.

Kim 2:17:07

Right, which is why they tell the flight attendants you're not allowed to talk about these things.

Douglas 2:17:12

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So do you think going through that experience prepared you for your cancer battle?

What To Say To Someone Sick

Douglas 2:17:21

Just the going through that stage of I don't think so.

Kim 2:17:27

I think I felt like it was a pylon. Okay. I felt like oh, one more thing, like, oh my gosh, when am I ever gonna get a break? I think where things shifted was probably when I got to my NED status, like, okay, I I made it this far. And I proved to myself that I could push through as much as I could the treatments they'd let me have, right? Because there's I think there's a lot of guilt that cancer patients carry of uh did I do enough, did I try enough? Did I people always like be positive? And it's like, no, be true to who you are in the moment and let it move through you. Don't shove it away for this toxic positivity. Like you get a lot of advice that you internalize at first until you can kind of tease it out.

Douglas 2:18:16

For those of us that haven't gone through cancer, what is what is you what are the right things to say to do when we find out we've got friends or loved ones with cancer? I think it probably varies, everybody's gonna respond differently, but it's one thing.

Kim 2:18:32

It's so easy. It's one thing. What is it? What do you need? Okay. What do you need? What are you feeling? Yeah, you're never gonna fix it.

Douglas 2:18:44

No.

Kim 2:18:44

There's not a single word you can say that's gonna make it better. But you can listen and you can be there without judgment. You cannot tell them how to handle their own emotions. You can tell them don't come to them with fenbendazole and whatever other, you know, dewormers are the newest thing that doctors don't know about. Like, none of that. But yeah, just listen and just be there. And if you do it without judgment, they might actually feel open enough to share some of the scariest stuff and then hold that without judgment, without commentary. Repeat back to them that you understand what they're saying as much as you possibly can. That's it.

Douglas 2:19:28

But it's hard. Oh, it's really up and hard. That's really hard to do that.

Kim 2:19:32

Yeah.

Douglas 2:19:33

To show up like that? Yeah.

Kim 2:19:36

Oh, people disappear.

Douglas 2:19:37

It's it's not it's not as hard as what you're going through, but man, that's hard for us to do.

Kim 2:19:42

It takes time, effort, responsibility, connection, vulnerability, all the things we're really bad at as humans.

Douglas 2:19:51

Yep. Yeah. Yep.

Kim 2:19:54

Yep. But yeah, people, you know, in the warrior talk. I have one friend who thrives on it, and it's really funny for years. She even had like her friends would make her t-shirts, you're such a warrior, you're what whatever it said, and they'd have a big party before her surgery, you know, and I was so different from that. I hated that talk. I felt so scared 100% of the time. I felt like every time I walked into that oncology, the treatment room, I didn't know what that cocktail was going to do to me next. Like it was different every time and never good. So it was like playing Russian roulette. That doesn't feel like a warrior. I guess if I look at it from somebody as somebody else doing it, I feel that way. But I also know if they're doing it, they probably feel like me. Like they don't want to hear that language. Like it's it's hard to carry the burden of being somebody's warrior or being a hero or being whatever the language is that we endure. We endure what we have to or we die. That's really all it is. And I think, you know, it there are a lot of articles on this, and a friend of mine actually brought it to me, and it helped me understand people are being kind. And I was like, why am I getting angry at their kindness? But I was, and I didn't know what that was about until I read this article, and I was like, Oh, that's what's happening. Okay. And so I did a YouTube video on this, and I had all these cancer patients going, Oh my god, you're I didn't understand like why I was angry at my people. And then the people who were caretakers, like, I didn't know I was doing that. But then I also had so many people going, Well, obviously you don't care about what I was trying to do for you by saying these things, and so I'm out, you know. I'm like, okay, prove my point, but okay, yeah, thanks. So yeah, it's it's it's a whole different that's why I feel like it it's a whole different language, but it's not language of words, it's language of the heart and listening. And if you're with the person already wondering what you can say, then you're already in it, right? So it's hard, but in some ways it's easier than trying to fix them with words. I don't know. That's all I got for you.

Douglas 2:22:16

That's enough. Okay. What what else are we missing in the camera story?

Kim 2:22:23

Just I don't know, purpose

Death With Dignity And A New Fight

Kim 2:22:27

now. I'm now working with the um end-of-life organization for Alaska, trying to the day that I just so I'm in the middle of a thing now. Um last week I went in to the clinic here because I was having neck pain and it felt like it was in my jugular. And I was told I should probably, it's not emergent yet, but there could be a clot in my port or an infection, so I should probably just take commercial flight to Juno, get it checked out. So I did that. And I was seen at the ER. They kind of shipped me off and said, someone else will deal with you in the morning. Why don't you go over to oncology or maybe go to search? Because right now we can't we don't have we don't know what to do. We might drive infection deeper if we try to get none of that was true. If you have an infection, you want to find out that it's at the site, and then you yeah. So anyway, they did nothing. And then the next day I walked into oncology and I told them what was going on and that what hadn't been done, and they were like, CT, uh, ultrasound, and like set up all these things, and I the ultrasound is the first thing, and they the woman, of course, makes a mark on my neck, and she's like, I'll be right back, I'm gonna go talk to the doctor, and I'm like, that's never good. I have a six-centimeter clot in my jugular right now that yeah. So they started me on blood thinners and they did a CT, and yeah, so it's it's about here to here right now, and I feel like a ticking time bomb. So I'm I say all this because I'm going for surgery on Wednesday to have this removed and I'm on injectable blood thinners twice a day. I'm doing myself right now, and yeah, it's a whole thing. So I'm very happy to be involved with the end of life group here because the day that I had all this happen, New York enacted their death with dignity law.

Douglas 2:24:22

Oh, so that's been enacted there now. Yes.

Kim 2:24:24

The governor attacked on a bunch of extra things that make it really difficult. Like you have to have a psych evaluation, which it takes six months to get that done. Like, I don't know how she expects us to actually implement this, but it it's on the books.

Douglas 2:24:37

Yeah.

Kim 2:24:38

So but I want it here, and I not for me, it probably would never happen before I get to use it, but I want to help them. So that's my that's my thing now, working with those guys and gals and all of them, guys and all gals, and trying to get something a little bit more compassionate going on here in Alaska. But it's it's a fight. The disability community mostly they fear that somebody will make the choice for them, I think, even though the law says you make the choice yourself and you need a doctor's clearance and you need this and you need that, but it's definitely a more peaceful way to go. So, yeah, so that's what I'm in the middle of now. It just never ends. I thought I was gonna get like maybe two summers on this drug, and now I'm not sure how to deliver it if I don't have a port, because the last two times ago they put the needle in my vein, and you can still see the scars, but it leaked through the vein walls of my arm, and my whole arm was twice its size. And so they said you never can take it through your veins anymore. You always have to do it straight into your heart because it will it's so much fresh blood gets pumped in that it gets diluted. Diluted enough? Yeah. So I don't know what this means for treatment. It wasn't like the it's not like this thing couldn't break off and give me a pulmonary embolism. I said to Tim, I'm like, Well, that would be better. Um but it's um yeah, if I make it through surgery, which I I will, and I'm just saying, like, there is a possibility there that things could go wrong, and I'm facing that right now, but it's it's um not I just I don't know what that means for treatment. So we finally got the dose right, I'm finally here kind of doing my thing, and and now it just all went to hell again. I'll come out on the other side or I won't, but and I know it's waiting for me. I'm good. I just don't want to be in pain and I don't want my husband to suffer. That's that's

Living With Risk And Loving Well

Kim 2:26:44

it.

Douglas 2:26:44

Well, I hope however it works you find the way that you're not in pain and your husband doesn't suffer.

Kim 2:26:51

Thank you.

Douglas 2:26:52

But I hope to see you back here next spring.

Kim 2:26:54

Me too. We got some photography to do that. We got some photography.

Douglas 2:26:58

I'd love to go shooting from you, but regardless, even if we don't go shooting, I I'm I'm looking forward to seeing you back in Haynes.

Kim 2:27:06

It's my favorite place to be, and I love seeing you here.

Douglas 2:27:09

So that's that's my positive thought for you, Kim. Thank you. And I I appreciate you sharing your story with all of us.

Kim 2:27:15

Thank you for listening. Thank you for sharing your stuff too.

Douglas 2:27:19

Oh, it's been my mind is racing in a thousand different directions from our conversation. Do you have more questions? It's just things that I'm it's it's like where do you do where do I go with this information? Right? Because not not all of it's based on cancer, but some of the out-of-body and the there's just a lot there to process, and in a in a week I'll probably have a bunch more questions for you. But in the minute, I'm just trying to process that and think of all the different things that you've talked about, and um yeah, there's a lot there. Yeah.

Kim 2:28:05

And none of us know what's actually real, it's all perception, right? Like it's our personal human viewpoint, so whatever happened to me might look entirely different to somebody else.

Douglas 2:28:15

Yeah. You know, I mean, this is just how I experience it, but no, and the way that and the way that you talk about it so openly and just hey, this is this is what happened. There's a lot of there's some of that stuff that most people wouldn't even share. Yeah.

Kim 2:28:33

Well, I was one of those people until now, so yeah.

Douglas 2:28:36

Do you do you think do you think going through this and at the stage you're at, has that allowed you to be more open?

Kim 2:28:42

There is huge freedom in knowing you're at the end. Like socially, social acceptance, right? Like who cares? Yeah. Who cares? I don't care. I don't care anymore. And I, you know, I grew up caring a lot. Uh-huh. I was groomed into making sure that I was always performing properly, you know, and I just, yeah, I I don't care anymore. And seeing the value of what I've shared on YouTube already, like that that's really kind of where I'm at. I know that I've helped people. I mean, I have evidence of that. And so I don't want that to end, even though it is getting more taxing. Because like, right today's a good day. I'm further away from chemo than I had been last week. Um, I have more strength in that way. The the clot is making me a little bit more winded when I actually move, but when I'm sitting, I'm fine. Um if I don't share before I'm gone, all of that goes with me. And so there's a little bit of not caring, there's a lot more of the actual caring, depending on which direction we're talking about.

Love Insurance For The People You Leave

Kim 2:29:51

So you know, I also um actually I do have one more thing I want to talk to you about, and it's about a gentleman who I met through YouTube. His name is James Loftus, and he came to me with an idea for something to leave to Tim when I'm gone. And I think you might actually find this interesting because we're talking about like end-of-life stuff, right? And and how we can lessen the grief for our family. And he came to me with something that was such a beautiful gift. He's a painter, very skilled, and so he took a canvas, made it into a green screen, and did a time-lapse of him painting a portrait. And over the painting coming to life in layers, he had video of this person who's past and that person's loved ones playing in the periphery. And I was like, this is amazing. And he's like, You can add any message you want, you can add any memory you want, you can make something new, you can do a montage of whatever. Uh-huh. And I was like, this is incredible. And so we started talking more about it, and I was like, What are you doing? Like, you know, clearly you're thinking about this, and he's a hospice volunteer. Um, so he he interacts with this on a day-to-day basis too, but he's he's young, he's like early 40s, and he's got an eight-year-old kid, and he's happily married, and none of them are sick. They don't anticipate dying anytime soon. And I'm like, what makes you think of this? And he said, if anything ever happened to him and his little boy was left to face all of that grief, that he wanted a way to interact with that grief that he knew he could never erase, but that somehow he could lessen. And so one of his ideas was to take a Lego kit and unbox it of just him and his camera unboxing this thing and saying, Hey, hey, little guy, I hear you are having a rough day, mom told me.

Douglas 2:31:54

Oh, wow.

Kim 2:31:54

Like, yeah, right? Goosebumps. And he's like, I'll just talk it to him as like as if I were just right there. And it's gonna be one way, but for him to know that I love him no matter what, no matter what time frame, like if I'm here, if I'm not here, and then I'll just box it all back up and I'll put it on the shelf and leave the video with his, you know, on his phone for you know, mom to find and share or whatever, put it on a hard drive and stuff. And he's like, I want to build these. I want to build these so that when he goes for his driver's test, when he has his first girlfriend, when he gets married, if he gets married again, he can recycle it. But um, but wild, right? And he calls it love insurance. And I was like, Oh my god. Yeah, so I just told him to start a channel and I did a little talk with him, and I'm gonna send people there, but he's got content in there now, so if anybody is interested, um James Loftus, yeah, L-O-F-T-I-S. But he you can see him doing that. He's like, you don't have to do a painting, you don't have to involve anybody else. And so in our talk, we actually talk about, and it's not live yet, but it will be soon. Um, just writing a journal like letters to somebody in a journal. It could be so low-key. Just speaking into your phone for a minute. Like we we hold on to those last voicemails because we want that piece of hearing somebody, right? So anyway, I just thought that little bit of love insurance is kind of a cool note to end on.

Douglas 2:33:21

That is, but I can see that I boy, that would be hard.

Kim 2:33:25

Making it or receiving it?

Douglas 2:33:26

Making it.

Kim 2:33:27

Yeah. Oh yeah, he talks about that too. I'm not gonna ruin the whole thing, but yeah, he he talks about you have to put like it's not putting yourself in the scenario of that person like knowing that that person is hurting so much as you visualize yourself as the medicine and you don't go into are they sick, what are they suffering? You don't put yourself in the suffering, you only look at the medicine or you will go down a dark path. But if you just have that kind of casual conversation of, hey, I'm thinking about you today, just want you to know I love you forever. Simple as that. Leaving just that one could change everything. Like, yeah.

Final Reflections And Farewell

Douglas 2:34:08

That's a great way to end this.

Kim 2:34:11

I I he lifted me up so much. Of course, the two of us had a conversation the other day, and I'm like, so have you implemented any of this? Because right now I'm thinking about all of it because you know what's going on with my neck. And he's like, Nope. I'm like, yeah, me neither. So but I will. I have a whole YouTube of memories that I've created for Tim, so they're all like housed there. If I ever have a hard drive drive crash or whatever, he can always go there and watch. There's a whole playlist for him. So I have thought about him, but not I I need I would like to do some other things. Uh huh.

Douglas 2:34:46

Yeah.

Kim 2:34:47

So that's we can end that back. Thank you, Kim. You're welcome.

Douglas 2:34:51

This has been an amazing afternoon.

Kim 2:34:54

Thank you for sharing it with me. This is I've loved learning more about you just as much.

Douglas 2:34:59

This has been, yeah, no, this is been very moving for me. And I appreciate you sharing your story. And I look forward to seeing you next spring. I'm working on it. All right.

Kim 2:35:15

And if not, maybe I'll see you another way. Our paths will cross. Yes. Yes. We'll be high fiving up there somewhere going, hey, we did we did cross paths.

Douglas 2:35:27

Our paths will cross. We did good work in the future. Yes.